Just pick something, already

So here's the thing about me: I'm all over the place. That whole thing about how great it is to be a Renaissance Man? Myth, probably never true. Don't know, don't care. But what frustrates me more than anything these days is how my lack of focus throughout the years has furnished some patterns. Some good, some bad. All breakable, I hope.

Now, before I start sounding all "woe is me", I'd like to point out that I am EXTREMELY blessed with a wonderful small family, a home in a great school district, and all the accoutrements of a mild suburban dreamlife, complete with a job for which I work from home 90% of the time. (Try doing THAT as a musician!) Anyway, all of these patterns can be summarized by how they come up in conversation - I hope you don't mind the structure, but I find it helpful in any case.

PATTERN ONE: "That's one long resume there, son..."

I know about a variety of things. Music, science, technology, public policy, manufacturing, business process modeling, service sector management, finance/insurance, consulting, blah, blah, blah, and now publishing. I bounced from sector to sector over the last thirteen years, never really staying in a position longer than three years with a median of under two years and lived in a few different regions. Crazy a generation ago, not uncommon now. Still kind of a lot of moving around, both geographically and professionally. Upside: I'm probably never bored. Downside: Potential employers have always seen this as what it is - relative inexperience in their industry, no matter that I've probably worked in it before, and instability.

PATTERN TWO: "I see you know some PL/SQL - are you an expert?"

I know a little about several programming languages and language constructs, allowing me to jump back and forth - as the economy dictates - between ColdFusion, PHP, C# .NET, classic ASP / old-school VB, C++, etc. My LinkedIn profile labels me "Code Ninja" - I like the phrase, but wish it were accurate to say "[insert language] Ninja". I like that I am generalist and what I can do with that, but I also respect specialists so much that I long to be one. Does that make sense? I think so.

PATTERN THREE: "Yeh, I don't really have a CS degree. Nope, not a BA, either. Music. Alright? Music! *^%&$& What of it?!?!"

Taking a step back in my professional life: Man, I can lay down a fat groove behind a set of drums. Seriously. And I mostly do not embarrass myself when I stand at the back of an orchestra (though this is so much less the case these days that I no longer accept the engagements). The fact that I last made (most of) a living with a pair of drum sticks in 1997 means that I am probably on par with a really, really good college freshman music major but could not hang with a grad student when push came to shove. Still, I have the analysis chops - hardened by years more listening and, well, my day job - to fully learn and comprehend music better than ever. My ears got bigger, my hands got smaller. Not quite a critic yet.

I spent six years in school for music, collecting instruments from around the world and then - slowly - stopped my aggressive procurement cycle. Eventually. :) Along the way, I was a federal sales admin for a networking hardware company, then I got into web design, then development, then BOOM. Here I am, all into technology that shifts focus every six months with a buttload of unused instruments in the basement. I tend to follow multiple technologies, leading myself down paths I never really intended. (See first sentence of this paragraph.) So what do I mostly closely resemble? A hobbyist who collects instruments. Oh, and I program in natural light instead of playing my instruments in my basement or a dim club.

(Yes, this section saddened me...)

PATTERN FOUR: "What's your specialty?"

Getting back to my original point, I'm not (really) a specialist in my line of work, programming - I am, specifically, a generalist. Maybe that's a hold-over from my percussionist days. I really, really want to do object-oriented PHP development, just like I really, really wanted to be a marimbist - but I'm increasingly pulled away from it throughout my career to work on BI (which I really still like, but not as a full-time gig yet!), legacy code maintainence ("you fix it, you own it!"), or dev projects using technologies far afield from where I want to focus my energies. Can I design a kickass application that will behave and scale well? Absolutely. It'll even self-administer. How often do I get to do that? Maybe once a year for a few months, but never EVER focusing on just that. Ever. How often did I get a call for a marimba gig? Uh... twice. Like I said, patterns.

So where am I going with my excessive analysis and history-dumping? Well, I'd like to break two related patterns, since I can apparently never pick just one:

1. Drive myself to set goals in one technology that I already know and align those goals with my day job or vice versa. This is really new year's resolution-y, but it's reasonable. Will I change which technology at some point? Probably. But I need to try and focus.

2. Spend some time on music, getting better at one thing. (Duh.) Not so I get good enough to hang with grad students; just so I can say, "yeh, I'll pop over sometime and we can play" and that I really CAN play, like "throw it down" kind of play. First to get dusted: at least one frame drum. Need to get a flight case for that... :)