complich8’s journal

I had a conversation with my old friend (and former roommate) Pat (Esker Curve) not too long ago. It sort of meandered… but I felt like it’d serve as a good window to my current mindset, and I guess to how other people see me. So I’m posting a chunk of it. Start and end are trimmed.

<complich8>: I’m something of a complex person … I’m torn between the desire to see my friends actually moving, having lives, etc, and the bit of contempt for my own lack of significant change the last couple years …
<complich8>: but what I really don’t like seeing is people digging themselves into ruts when they have the potential to be doing much bigger things…
<complich8>: several of my other friends are in the same boat, and I find it hard to talk to them because I’m afraid I’ll break out lecturing them on their wasted potential, on how much better people they are than to be doing the things they do.
<complich8>: but then I have to turn the same talk back on myself … I’ve been in college for 6 years and don’t have a degree to show for it, nor can I say that it’s been a wild and crazy fun time …
<complich8>: in fact, all in all I’d have to evaluate much of my time here as squandered youth … if I couldn’t get out in a reasonable time, at least I should have had a better time doing it.
<Esker Curve>: actually I think working and doing school and doing things you’re interested in is cool
<Esker Curve>: if it means anything, from the outside looking in
<complich8>: I suppose
<complich8>: it’s a matter of perspective, really
<Esker Curve>: of course. I am not you =P … except when I am in deep REM
<Esker Curve>: then I take over your SOUL!
<Esker Curve>: just kidding
<complich8>: but I’ve always judged my own success largely by the people I surround myself with, and more and more, lately, I’m finding myself surrounded by nobody
<complich8>: it’s like I’m living in a B. B. King song
<complich8>: and I guess the deeper I get into the things I like, the more I’m finding I don’t have a whole lot of peers who both can and are willing to keep up with me
<Esker Curve>: well, that is the curse of your genius, Dave. Honestly.
<complich8>: meh, it’s not genius. It’s just aptitude
<complich8>: genius requires both talent and work. I’ve just got talent.
<Esker Curve>: true that, but you have the ability to make wondrous things and connect them, in ways I can only imagine, if that, and I’m smarter than the average bear.
<Esker Curve>: I too sometimes judge how well I’ve done by comparison to others. However I have sort of resigned myself and realized I can only do so much and then … gotta look out for myself.
<Esker Curve>: and what makes me truly happy. That’s why I can only see myself being an engineer for like, maybe 5 more years
<Esker Curve>: as for you, you are taking things in stride, and advancing in ways you can.
<complich8>: then what?
<Esker Curve>: I dunno exactly. Maybe teaching, or humanitarian work. I’ve found that yes, I have a dark side, and it really wants me to go into politics.
<Esker Curve>: but… I like my light side more.
<complich8>: I was talking to Jenett today … and found out that she basically went through the same curriculum I am in now
<complich8>: and is doing the job I’m doing now, but on a slightly larger scale and for a considerably larger salary
<complich8>: (i.e.: I’m still making wage:-p)
<Esker Curve>: lol
<Esker Curve>: I see.
<Esker Curve>: and how does that make you feel?
<complich8>: slightly reflective
<complich8>: apart from the inevitable (and tired) harping about how I’m drastically underpaid for what I do…
<complich8>: this person who basically followed the same path 15 years ago that I’m on now is doing the job I’m doing now
<complich8>: so essentially I’ve followed her plan, but short-circuited about a decade off of it
<complich8>: but how do I feel about being a sysadmin when I’m 30?
<complich8>: or 40?
<complich8>: do I want to keep doing essentially the same job forever?
<Esker Curve>: of course you don’t, unless it’s what makes you truly happy
<complich8>: at work, I sometimes randomly cycle through the output of “fortune” (which just polls a very large database for random quotes)
<complich8>: and I ran across a saying that struck a bit close to home
<complich8>: “If you understand what you’re doing, you’re not learning anything”
<complich8>: I’m getting to the point where I understand what I’m doing
<complich8>: in fact, I’d say I’m quite a bit farther along that path than most …
<complich8>: like, most sysadmins focus on a particular flavor of Linux
<complich8>: or on a particular Unix
<complich8>: or on windows
<complich8>: a few focus on connecting technologies (such as samba, apache, webdav, ldap)
<complich8>: some focus on networking
<complich8>: some focus on security
<complich8>: some focus on systems/hardware
<complich8>: I’m a bad lens, in that I haven’t focused on anything
<complich8>: instead, I can fluently do ALL of those things (except ldap, I still don’t get ldap)
<complich8>: within the scope of what I do, I have a handle on very nearly every topic of specialization, and can at very least implement simplified functional setups of any combination of them
<Esker Curve> logged out.
<Esker Curve> logged in.
<complich8>: want an activedirectory domain with a samba member server serving profiles, Kerberos authentication, an application server hosting whatever app/apps you want to run on it and a virtual hosting website with an arbitrary set of virtual hosts? I can do that. In fact, can, will, and have.
<complich8>: I’m sort of feeling the walls of my chosen area closing in on me
<Esker Curve>: see, I think it’s that one advantage you have that I think you will end up doing well, but you will have to learn to focus on something for a little while anyway
<Esker Curve>: and be content with doing things your own way (hell make it a personal marketing thing, saying “hey look what I can do, need someone like me?”)
<complich8>: that’s not really the point though …
<complich8>: the point is that you have two choices: grow or stagnate
<complich8>: I’m nearing the limits of growth in my chosen profession, and I’m not even IN my chosen profession yet.
<Esker Curve>: I was gonna touch on that next btw =P
<Esker Curve>: so you have a choice: grow, or stagnate
<Esker Curve>: you missed one.
<Esker Curve>: completely change events or paradigms.
<complich8>: that’d be “grow over the wall”
<complich8>: relocation is another form of personal growth
<Esker Curve>: yeah but you can really only do that as environments and economics allow
<complich8>: right…
<Esker Curve>: so you can’t really bash yourself for not moving out of an apt.
<Esker Curve>: or out of IN
<complich8>: not relocation in that sense
<Esker Curve>: oh, professional relocation.
<complich8>: relocation in the sense of re-centering interests, picking a new field
<complich8>: but, the fact that I’ve done as generally badly as I have in my education closes a lot of doors
<complich8>: I don’t have the gpa to go to grad school in CS, I don’t have the gpa to go to grad school in psych, I don’t see the point of going to grad school in philosophy …
<complich8>: basically I’m looking at graduating in a very scant few classes
<complich8>: like … I could still change my schedule tomorrow, and graduate this semester, but when I do graduate I lock many of the doors that I’ve merely closed, because my gpa will be fixed where now it’s mutable.
<complich8>: I need to find a field in which I can grow without bound.
<complich8>: and I’ve come to realize that that field is none of the ones that I’m pursuing, nor any that I’ve pursued in the past.
<complich8>: there’s a lot of things I’ve pursued in the past, by the way … I couldn’t even BEGIN to list them all
<Esker Curve>: hm … then it sort of feels like you are searching … do I understand right?
<complich8>: but everything … in life boils down to endless repetition.
<complich8>: you could say I’m searching …
<complich8>: for what I should be doing
<Esker Curve>: “what you want to be when you grow up?”
<complich8>: understanding of a subject area is like emerging from the ocean.
<complich8>: when you don’t understand it, you’re drowning. when you just grasp it, the field looks infinite. when you get to a certain point above it, you grasp the edges of it.
<complich8>: different oceans have different breadths and depths. but when you discover that your ocean was a pond, what do you do?
<complich8>: find a bigger pond that you can’t see across and hurl yourself in?
<Esker Curve>: go to the next one … simply. one that interests you. and then, to the next.
<Esker Curve>: or you can attempt to redefine those boundaries
<Esker Curve>: or would you be happy redefining boundaries, necessarily?
<complich8>: I would be fine with that
<complich8>: finding boundaries that I can change
<complich8>: but that’s where the chosen field thing comes in
<complich8>: in systems administration, the boundaries aren’t the sysadmin’s to change
<complich8>: sure, I can come up with clever workarounds to things, or intelligent ways of automating things…
<complich8>: but my limits are externalized: what do the developers give me to work with? what does the IT budget I’m allotted let me buy? what does our user base need?
<complich8>: people who don’t know systems administration equate system administration and godhood
<complich8>: and, in a certain viewpoint, they might be more right than they think
<complich8>: that is, if a god is bound to arbitrary laws which define even his own sense of right and wrong, constrained by arbitrary rules in his ability to create, then sure…
<complich8>: ie: if god is powerless to create outside of a certain framework
<complich8>: the options to chip away the limitations of systems administration are ultimately all “grow over the wall” one way or the other
<complich8>: “become an IT manager, stop adminning systems, start adminning admins”
<complich8>: “become a developer of new technologies, and implement the software that ultimately relaxes the limits on the sysadmin”
<complich8>: “leave the field entirely for something less clearly defined”
<complich8>: but how true is that of the rest of science?
<complich8>: in biology, the wall is chipped away more by our ability to manipulate chemistry and computation
<complich8>: in chemistry, our ability to manipulate physics
<complich8>: in physics, our ability to manipulate math, and engineering
<complich8>: in math, our ability to manipulate logic
<complich8>: in logic, we’re not even IN science anymore, we’re in philosophy, which ultimately boils down to our ability to manipulate our beliefs
<complich8>: even within the realm of things like astrophysics, our ability to push the boundaries is limited by our ability to engineer better telescopes, better computational methods and computing power, and ultimately depends on our ability to traverse impenetrable distances.
<complich8>: ie: we’ll never watch a black hole eat a star from anywhere near close enough to get a really good idea of what’s going on until we can actually travel faster than light, and all signs in physics point to that not happening in the foreseeable future.
<complich8>: (or until a small black hole comes and perturbs our solar system, eats or irradiates us, and ends the spec of cosmic history known as human consciousness once and for all)
<Esker Curve>: well Dave … and I speak generally here
<Esker Curve>: since computer technology, system admin, management, etc. are all human constructs, you in theory have a lot to build upon
<complich8>: but what field ISN’T a human construct?
<complich8>: the question is, what is my ultimate goal?
<complich8>: what do I want myself to become? What do I want my species to become?
<complich8>: and how can I work towards both?
<Esker Curve>: hell not even that. Screw what you want humanity to become
<Esker Curve>: just be happy with yourself, and work on what makes you happy
<complich8>: ultimately, complacence, then.
<Esker Curve>: now what you want yourself to become … is something only you can answer.
<complich8>: seek happiness
<complich8>: but happiness in your own powerlessness to create anything larger than yourself?
<Esker Curve>: my theory is that happiness, when you truly strive for it, doesn’t necessarily imply complacence. The opposite in fact.
<Esker Curve>: in all I think you have some thinking to do =P
<complich8>: what if my happiness is ultimately tied to my ability to do things larger than myself?
<Esker Curve>: then you just have to keep trying to make things larger than yourself until you find your limit.
<complich8>: to push the boundaries, to make the connections, to dig trenches between the infinite disparate ponds and perhaps futilely try to merge them into one great ocean
<complich8>: more importantly, groceries!
<complich8>: ttyl
<Esker Curve>: pfft

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 5:18 am and is filed under Idle Musings, window to the soul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.