A Very Bad Itch

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes 1:18

I am not entirely well.

I have taken some time off to recover; though, to be honest, I'm having my doubts that a full recovery is possible. I am merely hoping to beat this thing into remission. I am, as always, optimistic.

The source of my illness is described best by Seth Godin, author of "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us". I actually think that his book is a trivial piece of fluff, but he seems to be the first person who has actually answered the question of what I seem to do for a living, so I'll quote him here:

"What do we do for a living? We try to change everything.

We try to find a piece of the status quo – something that bothers us, something that needs to be improved, something that’s itching to be changed – and we change it. And we try to make big, permanent, important change."

-- Seth Goldin, TED 2009

I feel a bit egotistical posting this as my job description, but the operative word here is "try". I don't always succeed. However, this is about as accurate as it gets. I am lucky to do this for a living; and as frustrating as it is to not write code or ship software or fix bugs anymore (basically, to build something tangible), I am grateful to be given some leeway in scratching things that are "... itching to be changed."

Yet this is where the illness begins. You see, like any itch, scratching is not the cure. It only perpetuates the problem. The more systems I work to improve, the more things that I try to change, the worse the itch becomes. I have begun to live simultaneously in two worlds: the familiar present one, and a "just around the corner" world in which the current problems have been resolved. Dual-world living is an unhealthy state of existence, and it is beginning to wear me down.

So I've taken two weeks off to rest, reflect and recuperate and let the itch die down a bit. I will attempt to avoid launching any new projects. This situation calls for following Candide's advice, quite literally: "il faut cultiver notre jardin."