Sooner or Later?

I’ve always considered myself a jack of all trades, master of none. I don’t know where that thought or consideration came from, but I seem to keep coming back to that notion to question if that’s actually real. I can recall a conversation in a car full of friends celebrating the accomplishment of one of our kings graduating from medical school, during that care ride we all tried to rank/grade our lives in that moment, the two main areas we focused on were professional and personal. In a resounding unanimous fashion we all ranked our professional lives high, but also in a somewhat of a unanimous fashion we ranked our personal lives not as high. Recalling this conversation is like that book you keep coming across either through friend recommendations or from algorithms of all of the things. In regards to my professional life I feel like that’s easy. I’m not a stranger to figuring things out and how to get better at tasks in relation to engineering or anything else that requires self study and/or being a self starter. The personal life though, that’s a challenge. Before leaving my last job I decided to give the role of a tech lead the good ol college try. The only problem is titles don’t necessarily give any indication as to what the job entails, so a tech lead at that job meant coming up with the technical plans AND being an engineering manager. Two jobs in one, but one salary… so much fun… Reeling in the sarcasm, this was the first time I’ve had to actually “manage” people and while this isn’t the story of how terrible it was because it wasn’t, there were many conversations I had about how managing people is so much different than writing code. Of course that’s true because first code works or doesn’t work based on whatever input you provide. So if it doesn’t work it’s because you didn’t program it to work. People fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your views of things, don’t operate that way. To me I say fortunately because robots aren’t fun or exciting, I like the random interactions that I would’ve never imagined I’d have with people and even some interactions I wish I never had. Life’s a mix bag of all of the things so you have to take the good with the not so good. If I had to come up on the spot with why I didn’t rate my personal life as high as my professional life it’s because I’m comparing that to all that I observe. Disclaimer: I’m not depressed just trying to think as objectively as I possibly can from my subjective position. In regards to personal life, great relationship with my family (check). Great relationships with friends, I’ll do thumb trending upwards because I can see the allure of conforming to some group or tribe, but that’s not for me. Lastly, relationship type of relationship… yeah that’s a negative ghost rider. There are many layers to unpack with this, but the fear of being used is a thing for me. This has spawned from instances where I’m giving and giving… and giving… and giving. That and needing to be mentally stimulated are the biggest things for me in that area. Which I can see why equality in relationships are a big thing for me, I’m not the guy that wants to control my spouse whoever she may be, whenever that is because even if you’re with someone you don’t own them and they don’t own you. I’ve lost all structure to this post so… I’m just going to end it… Hasta luego.