A bit more of a open, honest, personal round up this time: I’ve really struggled this week. Physical maladies and low vitamin d haven’t helped.
It started well, I found the root cause of a seemingly obscure problem involving compilation of c based ruby extensions, changing patch versions of ruby language and a cached folder of gems. These extensions are built against an exact version of ruby and so changing ruby patch version without rebuilding your pipeline’s cache of gems will cause an incompatible library error to be thrown, even though these changes won’t bring a change to your gemfile.lock file.
Looking back though, this seems obvious (once you know the context) so it’s difficult to see as a real win. It’s a bit niche for the rest of the team to value either.
I’m finding it hard work to be embedded in a disengaged team. When I’m more conscientious and don’t cherry pick work items I’m left working on something no one else wants to touch and I’m not particularly inspired by either. It’s easy to feel resentful and taken for granted at that point.
I’ve got concerns about the future too, there’s a few things I’m waiting on the outcome for. They probably won’t conclude until January and I’m struggling to be patient. Apparently I get twitchy, crotchety and destructively introspective rather than just enjoying the space to pause.
One suggested alternative is to pitch for a new role with more money. This seems decidedly counter intuitive and jaded; an opinion based on the unshakable conclusion that money is the only thanks one can ever get for a job well done. What a horrible world we live in if this is true. Time to bring on the Hygge.
In other dispiriting news, our usual annual social gathering got disrupted this year as our idea of fun didn’t match that of our friends. Their desire was to watch football in a loud crowded setting followed by a meal, four hours after my stomach thinks my throat has been cut. I need more options for social interaction methinks.
But today is magical, it is winter festival tree collection day, and it is snowing.
