April 01 2024
Mon 01 April 2024
A few months further into my "not working full-time and seeing how that goes" journey.
I've picked up a contract for the consulting end of my 'job' since January, that'll likely last til the summer or thereabouts -- it'd been fun doing the good and useful parts of the job I used to do, and being able to leave it alone when I leave work. Because I'm not 'full-time', I can take the odd day when I feel like it (not getting paid, of course), and the freedom of that is pretty good. I'd imagine I landed on my feet a bit with my first contract -- the sponsor is pretty chilled out about how much I work as long as the results we've talked about are happening. As with a lot of this stuff, I'm playing it by ear. Maybe it is normal?
I have a fairly...puritanical attitude to work, which it's hard to shake off. I occasionally get flashes of anxiety that I'm not in a big impressive tenured job that I can keep forever (Like I used to be, right? :-)). So I'm keeping an eye on the market as well, and if something really interesting comes up, I'll take a look. However, being able to do this for a while has been pretty good, especially since I actually picked up some work that's fun times. It's in IT, which isn't a world I've lived in at a technical level for a long, long time. However, the basics are similar -- busy teams, technical debt, trust, fear of change, and smart people keeping the lights on at the core that really do need a push in certain directions. Like with coaching, I get to do the fun parts.
Sometimes I wonder if I'd be better suited to being an IC -- if I've so successfully insured myself to the hassle-y parts of management that my skills there grew and tech stuff atrophied - I've been told I tend to underestimate my technical skills, so it's a thought in the back of my mind that perhaps at some future point I'll do IC again. Not urgent as a thought, but a thought nonetheless.
I've also found myself having to push myself to take time off -- even when public holidays come up (the team I'm working with aren't based in Ireland), I've had to remember and normalise not working. I'm heading to Morocco on the motorbike in a few weeks, so that'll cover me for time off for a while, right? :-)
Overall, I think I'm still learning things about myself that lay immobile for the longest time when I was working full-time - what I'm into, what motivates me, what my fears are, and a sense of normalcy about that being okay and being settled with it without absolutely everything being 'looked after'. A kind of corporate deprogramming, if you will.
