"How's work?" and other musings about life and purpose
Some facts about my new job:
- I work for Protego Networks, a startup company in the network security space. Our product is essentially a highly intelligent network monitor that allows you to keep track of events and attacks on firewalls and other security devices, with logic and analysis used to detect whether something is a potentially harmful attack or not, and the capability to notify system administrators about severe issues via email, pager, or other methods.
- I'm one of the test engineers, and employee #13. There are 8 Chinese, 3 Indians, 1 European, and 1 tall white guy from Missouri. The latter is the only guy younger than me (first job out of college), everyone else looks to be in their 30s and 40s. Since it's a small company environment, everyone does a little bit of everything. I'll most likely be using my skills in testing/test methodology, test automation, release engineering, and basically injecting some form of process into the way we do things, since up to this point almost all the development of the products has been hacked together - which works well for getting products out on time, but not for sustaining them.
- A typical workday looks like this, right now:
8:30-8:45 am - wake up, wash up, prayer and meditation on Scripture
9:25-9:30 am - leave home, take 280S to 680N (21 miles)
9:50-10:00 am - get into office
1:00 pm - lunch... this is on our own. One of my first orders of business here was to find out where the nearest Subway and Quizno's are
7:00 pm - dinner... provided by company, typically lunch boxes from a nearby eatery. Because of the ethnic makeup of my company, each day is either Chinese or Indian, with Korean on Wednesdays. So, if I meet up with any friends in the upcoming weeks for a meal, I'm going to insist on non-Chinese/Indian
7:30-8:00 pm - go for a walk around the neighborhood
10-10:30 pm - leave office, take 237W to 85S (18 miles)
11:00 pm - 1:00 am - talk to parents, read, practice guitar (since I typically don't feel like getting in front of a TV or computer screen after 12 hrs at work in front of one)
1:00 am - sleep
So how am I doing with regard to everything that's been going on in my life?
In the past two weeks, I've learned a lot about myself that I don't like, and some things that truly disgust me. I am mentally weak. I take good things for granted. I am not as strong or as stable as I thought I was. I am selfish.
During the late nights in my cube, particularly during the first week of work, I'd find myself mentally whining about things like "wanting to be passionate about my work"... "it's so hard to care"... "why am I doing this?" There were times where I felt a deep-seated resentment at being trapped at the office while Men's Group was meeting, or remembering the topic of a Youth Group Friday night, even of missing an NBA playoff game on TV while my Spurs were making their way to the final round of the playoffs. Bitterness at having nascent vacation plans from earlier this year jettisoned even before they could reach the dream stage. Annoyance that at the halfway point of my twenties, I still hadn't made any concrete steps to establishing a career path in a field that I truly believed in.
It's been a pretty long time since I've had to wrestle with myself so fiercely, and between being alone in the car to and from work, taking walks, and getting home late, I've had plenty of time to struggle. I distinctly remember coming home one night during the first week of work at about 11:15 pm, so frustrated that I just fell to the floor of the living room and did push-ups until I dropped.
It was this night, after letting emotions bleed away, where I realized that wow, there is yet still so much in my character and in my attitude that I need to turn over to the God of my life in order to be refined. While I'm wallowing in resentment over working long hours, there are thousands of people in this economy who are desperate for a job. While I'm getting annoyed with being in the office at 10:15 pm on a Friday night, there are millions of people struggling just to live through that night. While I had perceived the ability to choose my career as a right, I soon understood that it is an unspeakably awesome privilege that I had taken for granted. When I thought that I was a basically stable, even-keeled person, I discovered that this facade was likely primarily due to the cushy-soft life that I've lived up to this point.
It's almost as if there were these walls inside myself that came crashing down that first week, revealing a side of me that I didn't know very well, and that I didn't like very much.
Ironically, I took some encouragement from - get this - my own words that I posted on a friend's blog a while back, and she wrote them back to me in response to the first mass personal update email I sent out regarding my layoff: "It is comforting to know that God, being outside of time, sees who I am both at this moment in time and also what He's making me to be. Both the end result and the work that needs to be done to get there are pleasing to Him. He takes pleasure in the journey."
If nothing else, I've learned that God still has a lot of work to do on me. It's been a blessing in the last week to get up in the morning and come, completely empty, before God in Scripture and in prayer, knowing that trying to go it on my own would be futile. It's also been great to hang out with people when I can on the weekends... those 48 hours seem a lot more precious to me now, in particular the time to worship and study God's Word together with other believers on Sunday morning.
Last week, as I got more comfortable with the product and some of my duties at work, I found my attitude slowly improving, as well as my productivity. With the company at its particular stage in the corporate lifecycle, I can see that I have a lot to offer with my skills and experience, and that I can make a difference. I think being motivated by some kind of purpose makes a huge difference in attitude - whether that be working in a field that you're gifted in and have a God-given affinity for, or working in order to support a separate ministry (sometimes known as "tentmaking", based on the Apostle Paul's profession). I don't know yet which route I'm supposed to take, but while I'm trying to discern God's leading, I'm just going to try to do what I can, with what I have, where I am. I pray that somehow, I can exemplify Jesus to the coworkers I'm spending the bulk of my week with. I hope that God will continue to shape my character.
One final thought on this topic... the week before I started at Protego, I spent one afternoon in a "mini-retreat" of sorts where I spent extended time in worship, in Bible study, in meditation, in prayer, and in journaling. One practice that I've undertaken (and that I recommend heartily) in my journaling time is to jot down any possible future I could see God leading me to - ideas that can come from almost anywhere. One that I jotted down a long time ago was a desire to be a part of a church plant - to work with a small group of believers to establish a church community in an area where there was none before. For some reason, this came to mind as I prayed and meditated about God's purpose in the events of the last month of my life. Could this startup experience in the tech world be a personal training ground for a future "startup experience" in a different realm? I don't know yet... but I have a feeling that I'll find out eventually.
Random
- This past weekend, had dinner at Alice's place on Saturday with the other wedding helpers, then hung out for a while playing ping-pong and hanging out with Oski the dog. Sunday, after a stimulating discussion in Sunday School about Daniel's attitude and choices in serving the occupying Babylonian Empire, played basketball for a few hours, had youth counselors' meeting, and went out to dinner with some Canaan friends to celebrate Jen's and my birthdays. After eating, a few of us watched one of my fave movies of all time, "Star Wars IV: A New Hope". I suppose it's kind of disturbing how much of it I can quote. Karen has an amusing account of the movie on her blog. I'm a geek, am I?
- GO SPURS!
- GO GIANTS!
Some facts about my new job:
- I work for Protego Networks, a startup company in the network security space. Our product is essentially a highly intelligent network monitor that allows you to keep track of events and attacks on firewalls and other security devices, with logic and analysis used to detect whether something is a potentially harmful attack or not, and the capability to notify system administrators about severe issues via email, pager, or other methods.
- I'm one of the test engineers, and employee #13. There are 8 Chinese, 3 Indians, 1 European, and 1 tall white guy from Missouri. The latter is the only guy younger than me (first job out of college), everyone else looks to be in their 30s and 40s. Since it's a small company environment, everyone does a little bit of everything. I'll most likely be using my skills in testing/test methodology, test automation, release engineering, and basically injecting some form of process into the way we do things, since up to this point almost all the development of the products has been hacked together - which works well for getting products out on time, but not for sustaining them.
- A typical workday looks like this, right now:
8:30-8:45 am - wake up, wash up, prayer and meditation on Scripture
9:25-9:30 am - leave home, take 280S to 680N (21 miles)
9:50-10:00 am - get into office
1:00 pm - lunch... this is on our own. One of my first orders of business here was to find out where the nearest Subway and Quizno's are
7:00 pm - dinner... provided by company, typically lunch boxes from a nearby eatery. Because of the ethnic makeup of my company, each day is either Chinese or Indian, with Korean on Wednesdays. So, if I meet up with any friends in the upcoming weeks for a meal, I'm going to insist on non-Chinese/Indian
7:30-8:00 pm - go for a walk around the neighborhood
10-10:30 pm - leave office, take 237W to 85S (18 miles)
11:00 pm - 1:00 am - talk to parents, read, practice guitar (since I typically don't feel like getting in front of a TV or computer screen after 12 hrs at work in front of one)
1:00 am - sleep
So how am I doing with regard to everything that's been going on in my life?
In the past two weeks, I've learned a lot about myself that I don't like, and some things that truly disgust me. I am mentally weak. I take good things for granted. I am not as strong or as stable as I thought I was. I am selfish.
During the late nights in my cube, particularly during the first week of work, I'd find myself mentally whining about things like "wanting to be passionate about my work"... "it's so hard to care"... "why am I doing this?" There were times where I felt a deep-seated resentment at being trapped at the office while Men's Group was meeting, or remembering the topic of a Youth Group Friday night, even of missing an NBA playoff game on TV while my Spurs were making their way to the final round of the playoffs. Bitterness at having nascent vacation plans from earlier this year jettisoned even before they could reach the dream stage. Annoyance that at the halfway point of my twenties, I still hadn't made any concrete steps to establishing a career path in a field that I truly believed in.
It's been a pretty long time since I've had to wrestle with myself so fiercely, and between being alone in the car to and from work, taking walks, and getting home late, I've had plenty of time to struggle. I distinctly remember coming home one night during the first week of work at about 11:15 pm, so frustrated that I just fell to the floor of the living room and did push-ups until I dropped.
It was this night, after letting emotions bleed away, where I realized that wow, there is yet still so much in my character and in my attitude that I need to turn over to the God of my life in order to be refined. While I'm wallowing in resentment over working long hours, there are thousands of people in this economy who are desperate for a job. While I'm getting annoyed with being in the office at 10:15 pm on a Friday night, there are millions of people struggling just to live through that night. While I had perceived the ability to choose my career as a right, I soon understood that it is an unspeakably awesome privilege that I had taken for granted. When I thought that I was a basically stable, even-keeled person, I discovered that this facade was likely primarily due to the cushy-soft life that I've lived up to this point.
It's almost as if there were these walls inside myself that came crashing down that first week, revealing a side of me that I didn't know very well, and that I didn't like very much.
Ironically, I took some encouragement from - get this - my own words that I posted on a friend's blog a while back, and she wrote them back to me in response to the first mass personal update email I sent out regarding my layoff: "It is comforting to know that God, being outside of time, sees who I am both at this moment in time and also what He's making me to be. Both the end result and the work that needs to be done to get there are pleasing to Him. He takes pleasure in the journey."
If nothing else, I've learned that God still has a lot of work to do on me. It's been a blessing in the last week to get up in the morning and come, completely empty, before God in Scripture and in prayer, knowing that trying to go it on my own would be futile. It's also been great to hang out with people when I can on the weekends... those 48 hours seem a lot more precious to me now, in particular the time to worship and study God's Word together with other believers on Sunday morning.
Last week, as I got more comfortable with the product and some of my duties at work, I found my attitude slowly improving, as well as my productivity. With the company at its particular stage in the corporate lifecycle, I can see that I have a lot to offer with my skills and experience, and that I can make a difference. I think being motivated by some kind of purpose makes a huge difference in attitude - whether that be working in a field that you're gifted in and have a God-given affinity for, or working in order to support a separate ministry (sometimes known as "tentmaking", based on the Apostle Paul's profession). I don't know yet which route I'm supposed to take, but while I'm trying to discern God's leading, I'm just going to try to do what I can, with what I have, where I am. I pray that somehow, I can exemplify Jesus to the coworkers I'm spending the bulk of my week with. I hope that God will continue to shape my character.
One final thought on this topic... the week before I started at Protego, I spent one afternoon in a "mini-retreat" of sorts where I spent extended time in worship, in Bible study, in meditation, in prayer, and in journaling. One practice that I've undertaken (and that I recommend heartily) in my journaling time is to jot down any possible future I could see God leading me to - ideas that can come from almost anywhere. One that I jotted down a long time ago was a desire to be a part of a church plant - to work with a small group of believers to establish a church community in an area where there was none before. For some reason, this came to mind as I prayed and meditated about God's purpose in the events of the last month of my life. Could this startup experience in the tech world be a personal training ground for a future "startup experience" in a different realm? I don't know yet... but I have a feeling that I'll find out eventually.
Random
- This past weekend, had dinner at Alice's place on Saturday with the other wedding helpers, then hung out for a while playing ping-pong and hanging out with Oski the dog. Sunday, after a stimulating discussion in Sunday School about Daniel's attitude and choices in serving the occupying Babylonian Empire, played basketball for a few hours, had youth counselors' meeting, and went out to dinner with some Canaan friends to celebrate Jen's and my birthdays. After eating, a few of us watched one of my fave movies of all time, "Star Wars IV: A New Hope". I suppose it's kind of disturbing how much of it I can quote. Karen has an amusing account of the movie on her blog. I'm a geek, am I?
- GO SPURS!
- GO GIANTS!
posted by Bob at
1:30 AM
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