Letters From The Equator

If only my lawn was emo then it would cut itself
Originally uploaded by Martin Deutsch.

I was meant for the wild open roads of Kentucky or Illinois. Not that I’ve really really been there.

A decade ago I turned an emo kid, just as I was leaving Lawrence, for crying out loud. And I carry with me the harsh regret of never ever witnessing The Get Up Kids live.

And I have slowly been deserting my life of baggy jeans and torn rock t-shirts (I used to wear those baggy REM t-shirts), and rarely look at myself in the mirror a lot.

So I think God was merciful in landing me in a software development career for the first five years of my life. For the most part, I didn’t have to care much about dealing with people, although I attest to having much friction with the QC testers. I could immerse myself in my mp3s and read articles from Slashdot and the Pitchfork Review.

But even those years are over.

Now, I find I’m tucking in my shirt, avoiding even polo-Ts apart from the ones with the corporate badge. I speak with more care than I ever used to, and I have started using management terms like “managing expectations”, “on the bridge”, and “telecon”.

I can’t fit in! I constantly get confused over my personas - indie rock fan, auto geek, web pundit, garage software programmer, and recently, a project manager, creative lead and technical senior.

Am I treating machines like humans and humans like machines? I’m getting it all mixed up. I can’t compile my colleague’s sentences, and I can’t get along with my IDEs.

Apparently, I lack EQ. Or EI, as in Emotional Intelligence. Well, I didn’t need a lot of it when I was writing so much code. And now that I do much less of that, suddenly I have to ditch “Hello, World” for a completely different set of instructions.

Recently, I was reading an article from the Brazen Careerist. It said that Emotional Intelligence were big pre-requisites for the following areas:

1. project management
2. creativity
3. productivity

And I’m in all of those! Aughh…! Isn’t there a can of Emotional Intelligence I can just buy at a convenience store?!

I just never thought getting along with people could turn out to be such a pain and source of anxiety. But now I’m required to.

I don’t hate people. I only don’t really like myself.