What might have been?

I find myself pondering some of my mis-spent 20s at this point in time. Interestingly some of my 20s were not so bad. I enjoyed myself some of the time. Most of the time I had no clue what I was doing or why. I think I was just following the program. The program goes something like this: "Look son, you're reasonably smart, you've got good marks. You should take something practical like engineering. Yes this is the ticket for you. Engineering then a nice sustainable career building stuff. Marry a nice girl. Settle down in the suburbs. Enjoy barbeques on Saturday nights with your buddies." Oh, if only life could follow such a plan. I think I've learned that you need to be making some decisions along the way. Giving up that decision making to others is not living. It's not even being, really.

I actually used to like the idea of working in optical networking. The problem I now realize is that I was never especially good at it. There's a lot of math involved in understanding the issues. There's a lot of nonlinear math and partial differential equations. You really want excellent math types to work in this area. I'm not so much that. I find the concepts interesting, but damned if I want to go through the math. I suppose if I'd had more time at work and less pressure to just deliver stuff then I would have had a chance to learn more. This was not to be the case. With the optical networking industry implosion it seemed like a good idea to just keep working. I regret not making any really good friends (other than colleagues) during my 20s. I'm embarrassed by my lack of contact with the fairer sex during the past 5 years. It's been lonely. Watching the week-ends of your 20s piddle away with not so much as a booty call is depressing at best. Wallowing in my own self pity is not going to change that fact. Older people try to convince me that I've made a good career decision by working for the man for 6 years. That I've built a reputation by doing this. I'm not sure I see it that way, but at least I have a block of experience that shows I come to work. If I started again at 19 leaving to go to UofW I would take Enviro Eng and damn the job prospects. Maybe even Enviro studies would have made more sense (in fact in one memorable moment I remember dragging the enviro studies sign to the engineering scunt headquarters... there was probably some reason I felt compelled to do that).

Lately I've been prodded by the VP Eng. about whether I really want a full time job. It's a difficult question to answer. If I had more time to learn then maybe. If they offered me a raise by 10k then I think it would be easier to accept. Or a better title. Or more autonomy. But really I'm almost scared to go that route because it means more of attempting to convince myself that I really like communications engineering.... and I don't have a MASc. Strangely the most important thing to higher ups is whether they can trust you and rely on you. This makes sense, they are people after all. However the MASc would be key to get into a new company. I tried it but left it too late. I remember thinking that I should do that in 2002. If I had then likely I would have ended up as a new grad hire at Nortel making 20k less than I did over those years. So financially I probably made the better choice by staying put. However I think I've walled myself off from any higher career advancement. A job in Italy is still a possibility. It is not a career maker, but it might be interesting for 2-3 years. At least on the week-ends I could go to interesting places. I would probably become a better snowboarder. I will see how things pan out.

I saw Oceans 13 tonight. The film is a threequel and as such I did not expect much. It is a typical caper film where the Oceans boys re-unite to try to put right a wrong done to one of them. The story seems contrived at times. Suspense is minimal because you are sure from the start that they'll manage to pull off the crime. The banter between the players that worked well in the first movie feels forced in this one. At times it seemed like the actors didn't even believe their own lines. I laughed a few times, but smiled more often. There are some weird parts like the workers riot in the Mexican dice factory. I'm not sure why the writers tried to send a social message in the midst of a fantasy caper movie. Hopefully this is the end to this series because I think dragging the series out longer will just offend fans.

That is all.