I Am Just Not Cut Out For This

This is not a funny post. Seriously. If you’re looking for funny, I suggest you look elsewhere. This is a post about my job, which is only funny in a “No, it’s not Office Space, it’s my real life” sort of way.

The Awesomeness of Code

There was a time, back in my Undergrad Program when I decided that a program to teach 8th grade students robotics and programming would be fun. So I made a job by creating such a program, bringing it to a middle school, and implementing it.

It was fun.

There were other times like this. Like the time when I thought a web-accessible database of coastal erosion data in ASP.NET would be cool (realizing that I didn’t know ASP, so would have to learn it), or the time when I thought that developing a data manipulation program for a Forest Service hydrologist would be cool.

They were cool.

There was this other time when I saw that the Forest Service had all this climate data online, and no online mapping interface connected to it. I contacted them and suggested it, knowing it would be a challenge. Then, I graduated and went to OSU- and the office with that data was at OSU, so I worked on it. I also stumbled into my thesis while I was at OSU, which was primarily data modeling, numerical methods and, yes, not a small amount of programming.

It was, all of it, challenging.

And finally, there was a time when I worked for the Water Quality division at DEQ, and they wanted to redesign and redevelop their heat & mass transport modeling application- and they wanted to do it in Python. “Oh joy, this will be awesome,” I thought.

It was, in a word, awesome.

Everyday, I came to work, looked at my whiteboard or at my issue tracker, and wrapped myself in a blanket of elegantly developed algorithms designed to calculate the position of the sun, and the movement of water, and to combine them into stream temperature. It was the most complex and beautiful programming I’ve ever done- combining the best of user interface design with just the craziest mathematical complexity ever.

I’ve been programming since I was about 14, and later spent 10 years going to school for geology and hydrology, for watershed management. And here they were together. The were combined in Eclipse, written in Python, spread beautifully across two 19 inch monitors, with a list of needed code improvements and bug fixes, and a whiteboard with angles and derivatives splayed across it that needed to be converted to flow structures.

Goddamn, I love code.

I commuted from Hood River to Portland to do this. I was in a vanpool, and so had to leave at 4 to make my ride home. Everyday around 3, I would have a little freakout session. Often having forgotten to eat lunch, I’d be amazed that it was that late.

You see, time really does fly when you are having fun. It’s true. (I had to code up a solar time-change modeling class for this project, so I know a few things about time and all.)

The Biggest Mistake Ever

I commuted from Hood River to Portland to do this, and that was the problem. I hated commuting. I loved my job, I loved the people, I loved the sweet, sweet smell of a daylight savings calculation bug at 7:30 in the morning.

But I hated commuting. So, when the opportunity to take a job in Hood River came, I took it.

That was likely one of the biggest mistakes of my recent years.

I understand that there are these strange, foreign people who really believe that programming for hours at a time is only slightly less painful than jabbing red-hot, iron pokers into their inner thighs. Seriously, they really exist.

I know, huh! That’s the same reaction I had when I heard of them!

Anyway, these people– strangers that I affectionately call “non-coders,” or NoCos–  really exist. There are a lot of them, actually. In fact, there are enough that I’ve come to believe that it’s not actually a disease. Social problem, perhaps, but I don’t think it’s actually defined in the DSM-IV or anything.

I’m not one of those people. Not that there’s anything wrong with NoCos, mind you. I mean, I even know a few! Heck, I’m friends with lots of NoCos! Even the woman whom I hired to clean my house is a NoCo (at least I suspect that she is). Anyway, don’t think I’m codeist or anything! I mean, I support NoCo rights just as much as anyone, you know!

Anyway, am not one of those people. I am actually one of those amazing, stupendous, wonderful people who lives to do nothing but code. I dream about coding. I’m one of those- let’s call them normal- people who thinks there is little more beautiful than a clean build before lunch. I want nothing more than to bang my head against the wall trying to find out why my recursive algorithm isn’t functioning properly.

And therein lies the fundamental problem.

Now, I find myself writing some stupid report about a ten year old project that’s been sitting on a shelf for about, oh, nine and a half years. I find myself gazing at laboratory reports about an underground storage tank in Sherwood. I find myself being counseled that a great, rewarding workplace challenge is to “try to get everything in a report figure right the first time, without having to make any corrections later.”

I find myself using the words “mindnumbing” and “physically sick” in the same sentence… multiple times every day.

One day, just as I was walking from my car to my building a large piece of ice slid off the roof and crashed to the ground barely two feet in front of me. I was actually disappointed.

No, seriously. That’s not a joke.

Look, I told you this post wasn’t funny, don’t blame me.

Anyway, I find myself experiencing all of this and I think “Granted, I haven’t actually tested it, but my intuition tells me that this is considerably more painful than shoving red-hot iron pokers into my inner thighs.”

I think I’m one of those people who could be classified as a NoReMo or something. A “not-report-monkey.” Call it a problem, hell call it a disease. Write it up in the DSM-IV. Whatever. I know now, after trying it (and giving it my all), that I am just not cut out for this. No, I am not cut out for this at all. Not one teensy tiny little bit.

Somewhere, Out There

The thing is, I know that I’m not alone. I know that others feel the same way. Even a scabby NoCo might feel something similar.

Somewhere, somewhere in some building, working for some company, in front of some computer, someone is writing a blog post similar to this.

Somewhere, there is a poor soul who has to fix some stupid bug in some computer program while they think of little else but how much even the thought of programming makes them sick to their stomach.

Somewhere out there, there is a person who hates even the thought of computer programming, and yet they are accidentally doing it for some stupid reason.  Maybe they made a mistake somewhere along the way, maybe they thought they’d try it, and did, but quickly learned that they hate it.

It’s a crazy thought that actually makes me feel that humanity is heading toward a fall, but somewhere out there, a person is probably thinking “There was a time when I had to compile a bunch of data and information about groundwater contamination into reports. That was really fun. I wish I could do that again.”

I’m thinking that this other person and me should get together for coffee and talk. Seriously, I’ll even buy it, and we can drink it in the same coffee shop- I won’t go to one of those “NoCos not allowed” coffee shops we have around here. I won’t make any comments about NoCos being weird either, honest. Let’s just try to talk and be civil to one another.

Then, we should go directly to our bosses. We’ll go to them, we’ll get them together and we’ll say something like this:

Look bosses, we actually throw up in our mouths a little bit every time we think about coming in to work. I mean, that’s bad, right? The thing is, we have dreams of actually doing their work. Both of us do. And let’s face it, if you could easily replace us, you would, right? I mean, who are we kidding? So, we should really just swap jobs- you’ll get a much better employee who loves what they do more than they love springtime and rose petals (and, in my case, only slightly less than they love a really good, barrel-aged milk stout).  Look bosses, I know it’s weird to think of ‘employee swapping’ and all- you don’t have to tell the other managers, honest. At least think about it, because it’s really just best for all parties involved if you swap us out. Seriously.

It’d be pretty great if that could happen, wouldn’t it?

Coda

Yeah, that’s the plan. I think this just might work, too!

Hey, you you are a NoCo, or one of those weird people who actually hangs out with NoCos (and you happen to know a NoCo who’s not happy because they are working as a normal person and want to get out) give me a call.

But call me at work, alright- I don’t really want NoCos having my home phone number. God only knows what they do during #afterhours.

I shudder at the thought.

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