Most of the Way

When “Brownian Motion” is an overstatement of your career direction….

I used to look back on my career and lament its lack of direction. And when I say “used to”, I mean two weeks ago. Seriously though, especially early in my career in IT I never felt like I was in control of my trajectory. I moved opportunistically from one engagement to another asking myself each time, “what about this gig has more of what I like” so that, perhaps, I’d figure out what it was I wanted to do. Only in retrospect did it seem to constellate into something that appears planned. At the time it didn’t feel that way. Which brings me to the theme of the week: most of the way.

Now that I’m what I’d call seasoned (and what the market calls “rather old”), I find myself taking stock of these questions with more frequency and urgency. I have a greater sense of “If not now, then when?” but also can take some satisfaction that, though I didn’t have much of a plan, it mostly worked out anyway. I’m considered an Expert in telecommunications (officially, because I’ve done expert witness gigs), so I can take heart from the fact it ultimately did amount to something tantamount to progress. But then I ask myself if it was in the direction I “was meant” to pursue, and it doesn’t quite feel that way. Or hasn’t so far. I’m in the process of remedying that sensation now. One could argue (as I do to myself, to make me feel better) that I had to follow this meandering path to rediscover the purpose I’ve always had: to be a writer.

The fact is, I couldn’t be the writer I am today unless I’d taken the time to mature. Many writers don’t feel this compulsion to live first. I don’t know how they do it, but I’m not throwing stones here. I’m just talking about what was right for me. The reality is, I’m a meandering sort of guy, defined by ambivalence and always on the verge of drowning in too much perspective. And it turns out that’s exactly what I like to write about – ambivalence – so it shouldn’t be surprising my life manifested this tendency, should it? Only it was a bit surprising, to me. When I externalized this into my protagonist McGhee, it became obvious.

So I think I can say now that I’ve come most of the way, and I think that’s as far as I’ll ever be able to go with it, only every day it will be a bit further on that path. For guys like me, that’s about as good as it gets, and maybe that’s true for you, too. But that’s ok. The best part of any journey isn’t the arrival. It’s discovering you’re on the path to get there, wherever there might be.