Greetings Bloggies.
This post has been started and stopped several times, with the first long destroyed sentences and sentence fragments being slapped together in April, with the overall thoughts behind it existing for longer still.
I have exceeded a year and a half at my current job, this has caused me to think about my goals.
This current position as a mapping tech with a small exploration geology firm is the product of
better part of two years of planning and work. Gaining this position fulfilled the objects I had set my self and described to the funding agency back in spring 2009. Stepping into an office job broke a nearly four year string of logging drill core in the ass end of nowhere. A stable job in the city has allowed me my first apartment where I can entertain a reasonable number of people, I have a cat now and I even bike to work. These are all good things, but the devil is in the details.
As a mater of both practical considerations and principles, I have promised that I would stay there at least two years. The rational is that I will gain a fuller understanding of my position and the industry and overall have an easier time getting work. Now that I have more time behind me before that two year point I find myself reconsidering my path. The choices that brought me to where I am now were driven by logic. I assumed that if I stayed in the field where I had the most experience but moved sideways I would minimize the time away from work and maximize return on the time spent in school. The trouble is in the application. Logic is great way to make rational decisions, it is a terrible motivator.
Logic landed me a job with a exploration geology company, we look for precious metal, we send geologist to far away places to try to find them. The trouble is I am indifferent to that quest. A half assed scramble for work at the end of my university program sent me on this path. Logic is now colliding with application. I spend far too long in front of a computer using a cranky piece of software, my body wants to walk more. I find my self increasingly having to push myself from one task to the next rather than having any momentum. When you are performing the n-hundreth iteration of the same task your brain starts to get a little funny with you.
Speaking of brains this job has not been the most kind to mine. While there has been some room for intellectual play during the summer months as I spend a few weeks dabbling in a scripting project, too much of this is mouse clicking and the endless fight with a cranky software and my weak organizational skills. This work, should be fairly easy, but because it fails to engage my creativity 9 times out of 10 I leave the office tired. This feeds back on it self.
Creativity and motivation are things that take practice. There is a quality of momentum to those processes, because my work is uncoupled from most of my creativity and removed from what drives me those qualities such as they are in me are weakening. My attention span has seemingly gotten shorter, a job consisting of too many short interconnected tasks, has reconditioned me away from the longer clearer focus needed for things like writing. I want a change.
Now the trouble with change is change towards what. I have deemed the resource sector good enough since 2006, but never felt much for it, sure there was some adventure, but once the novelty wore off it became a drag disproportionate to the returns. My current job is the longest running since I spent my two and half years in the north, it is a better fit than much of the work I have done. Yet I still feel the clock ticking, and when that runs out I will have had enough. The question hidden in plane sight is what next and how do I get there from here.
