I'm having probably the worst day I remember having in a long, long time. I can't stand to be near any of the people at my work. I just want them all to go away and leave me alone. My wife has trouble staying happy with me for more then an hour or so, and my son has just hit the stage where he'd prefer to be awake at night then in the day. Yay. I suddenly realised this morning that I've accomplished nothing in the last 5 years that I wanted to do. I mean, I always wanted to be a husband and father, which I've done, but I wanted to be a good husband and father, with a great marriage and be playing an important role in the development of my son - and hey, I'm not and I don't. It's not for lack of wanting... there's just something intrinsically wrong, and it's probably with me.
And then there's my job. When I signed up for my computer science degree, there were jobs in the paper for Windows/Linux sysadmins for 100's of thousands of dollars a year. Admining a webserver was a high paying job. While I'm at uni, it all goes to crap. So what do I end up doing? I bust kiddies who talk about their sexual exploits on their school email accounts. Or who surf gay pr0n for kicks while they're supposed to be studying. w00h00... The pinnacle of achievement.
You know, I'm going to teach my son that he can accomplish anything he puts his mind to. The thing is, I don't actually believe it's true. Pehaps it's just the hope of that ideal that drives the occasional person to greatness through a series of fortunate coincidences, but I guess hope is better then hopelessness. Aren't we crazy beings? Sometimes lying to ourselves will get us further then believing the truth.... Crazy.
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Perspective, man, perspective. You're sailing close to saying that being a sysadmin is less than a noble profession. I don't know much, but I *do* know that if it's where God wants you to be then you can rest easy about where you are or what you're doing. I too have set high goals for my life, in my career or as a father or husband. I share your feeling that diagnosing the third case of "your pointed indignation that you can't check your email would be more impressive if you remembered to plug in your freaking ethernet cable" for the morning represents less than the full expression of your worth as an I.T professional, but better days are ahead, I promise. Life as a School sysadmin is full of small gems. Like the cadre of nascent nerds I lead in an extension and enrichment class doing robotic Lego (yes, I get paid to play with Lego). Or the conviction that providing a "support service" like I.T is as much a ministry of service as any other activity. The body is made of many parts. Many of your school kids probably think you're God, playing with computers day in and day out. Jake *knows* you're God.
The last thing I want to do is be preachy, but this is one of the signs in my office:
“The longer I live, the more I realise the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you… We are in charge of our attitudes.”
-Charles Swindoll
Stick with it, my friend. Life is beautiful.
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