Distractions

I’ve been in a rut lately. I thought last week’s “vacation” would help recharge my batteries, but I’m still feeling pretty blah. I think some of it is coming down to my career. Currently, I perform a job that most engineers would be able to handle. Fortunately, I’m in this position because I have a lot of experience in the manufacturing side of it, which is the far less glamorous side of engineering. The nice thing about this side is that it pays fairly decent. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I want to stay in this field…especially as a woman. I think my career goals and aspirations have changed over the past few years from doing things that I thought were expected of me to finding what I want to do in life.

Recently, Google had an ad up on one of the local highways. It was sort of a challenge. Once that challenge was solved, it gave another challenge to be solved. When that was solved, it led to a website to apply to work at Google. I read about some people who spent time writing programs to solve the challenges and I looked at all of these fascinating areas that Google Labs wants to move into. I can remember programming as a kid. As a sixth grader, I was one of those special kids that was allowed to work on this new thing called a computer (the beginning of what became a long friendship with Apple computers). I had fun programming and learning new things. Unfortunately, there were too many distractions growing up that I soon fell far behind on the computer aspect.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to school and start all over again on what I want to be when I grow up. Now, it feels like there are, again, too many distractions. Transition has taken a lot out of me the past few years. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel though, and hope I can move on with something in my life. Hell if I know what that something is. Right now, I just try to put in a solid days work and live for the weekend when I hopefully have hair removal. I’m counting down to SRS. It’s bouncing around in the back of my mind, but at some point I hope I can focus on my career objectives.

Of course, I guess life is one big distraction…keeping the mind busy long enough before it knows what hit it.