Wanting to change the world
It's been a while since I last posted. I've been struggling, not with content to write, but with the output I create as a response to having something to write. I've been angry lately, and upset and frustrated, distracted. While I doubt this has affected you, I'm sorry if it has.
Being pulled in many directions
- Lots of people ask me to do lots of things.
- I'm a life-long learner.
- I'm married.
- I'm entering into becoming one of the middle generation of my family.
- I'm also working in the background on materials and supporting technologies to get ideas out of my head.
- I have a job.
A Matter of perspective
A Very positive thing to come out of my interview where I've been working since October 2018, is a term from my former manager Ross. Ross suggested that I, and many members of the team are T-Shaped individuals. Now that might be a polite way of saying we're jacks of many trades, but I prefer to think we have more interests than those with a narrow, perhaps expert focus.
Of many of the things I do… I'm not the best at any of them. I'm hopefully not the worst either. I like to think I'm at least good, perhaps exceptional in a few areas, just not top-dog.
Being the best is only suited to team sports. I rather enjoy being able to work in a team, it spreads risk and lowers stress. However I have found team-play to be a continuum, where some are more accutely dependent on the team.
Attempts to place effort
My attempts last year, with regard to more focus seem to have proven that others don't want me focusing in minute detail on things I want to work on, and I don't want to focus in minute detail, without control of what I'm focusing on.
I'm very sorry, but your font predelictions, pixel perfect designs and lack of attention to detail ruin my day!
I'm generally not excited about doing what I'm told in head-down, toil-time. I expect nobody is, but most seem to cope better than me. Some things that specifically irk me.
- How to convince people to give up their data.
- How to change pretty pictures, or make pictures prettier.
- How to empower the powerful, or increase their enjoyment of their lives at the cost of others.
I make great effort to try to use this to explain to others the value and the reasoning behind why a specific approach is important.
I'd like to change the world
For me that sentiment is not a, “I'd like one thing to be different” sentiment. I recognize for many there is one outstanding issue. If they could solve it, their world would be better. There is an end-goal. I don't have an end. If I improve something today, tomorrow I'm awake and frustrated by shortcomings in it or something else. It's exhausting, but seems to just be how I'm wired.
I Accept that my life is probably more comfortable than many people, but until I cannot think of how to change it; I'm going to keep working to shape the world as I feel it should be.
- How to convince people to knowingly accept me and those I work with enhancing their data.
- How to improve processes; present information effectively for a wide range of people.
- How to uplift & empower people who are underserved or underrepresented.
My want for a different world is almost entirely selfish.
In recent years, what may be a future realisation has been rearing it's head. Perhaps I need to change the world for others. Perhaps that will not serve my interests, but harm them.
Perhaps this won't be a momentary discomfort, but a permanent and irreversible change.
Perhaps that will change the world.
Perhaps that world would be better for more others.