I remember watching a movie called Knight's Tale and a line in there stuck with me. A young peasant boy happened upon an opportunity to take the place of a Knight. His nemesis would taunt him in tournaments and at one low point for the peasant, his nemesis said to him - "You have been drawn, measured, and found wanting". The peasant returned to try harder and show a lot of heart and prove himself.
I've recently left one rollercoaster of a ride with a Get Big Fast company. I had gotten very far up the ladder through brute force relying on my abilities to communicate and collaborate with people and to produce solutions that were comprehesive. I stood on top of my accomplishments and was satisfied and ready to do more. For me, I was bringing order to chaos. In the same breath, people standing in ivory towers can say that I was contributing to the chaos. To that, I say, "I did what I had to do, biatch." I sympathized with Jack Nicholson's character in a Few Good Men...
Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom....And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty... We use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!
When you're younger, you believe your sheer will can turn the tides. When you're a little older and have had a few notches of experience on your belt, you work the same way but you also expect some professional respect. For me, I felt like to make an incremental or better yet exponential difference in that organization would take me another 5 years bringing me to age 40. At the same time, I was hating the situation of having side opportunities to develop that I could never find the time for. I was lamenting that I was not building things that gave me satisfaction anymore. I guess that's what it feels like to be suffocating in a relationship gone bad.
The next 5 years of my life are very critical to me. The clock is ticking (ala a woman's maternal clock). I want something to show for my life's work and at least for me, I haven't seen the leadership in top level management in a big organization that would make me say, I will follow you to the death. There are things worth dying for.. my kids for example. I was telling my wife that in the next 5 years I will take what I learned in the last 13 and build my own company. It will be my fourth child, my boy (I have 3 girls). It will grow fast, right, and true. It will take care of me and mine in my middle age. For every thing I build under it's name, my reputation and technical well being will be nursed back to health and eventually, my family will be provided for. Imagine having paid enough dues that you are free to follow your passions and what I call "Generate The Energy."
Jewel has a song whose hook is "My hands are small I know, there not yours they are my own, not yours they are my own, and I am never broken." I've taken my future into my own hands and little by little, I am showing signs of life after Get Big Fast.
To that end , I've been taking my ideas and writing a white paper on Decision Support System agility. There's a right way to build the engine of a company that leads it past day to day operations and advances towards a truly successful business model. At the same time, I've been gearing up on Ruby on Rails to finally put dents in a pro bono web system I've been developing for someone. The sponsor has ideas and a target community and it's truly something I can get excited about now that I have the time and still the in coming cash flow. I feel more free than I've been for a long time, I'm reading books and interacting with the internet. I'm learning about open source libraries in Perl. Today, I saw some neat open source libraries being given away by Yahoo and Google. There's things to build with and builders are needed. I'm going to focus more on building and less on bullshit.
B U I L D E R S N E E D E D
