Switch
by Nate—Age 33—Petaluma, CA
When it all started I took phone calls and fixed problems. Technical people called me, software engineers, and I helped them do things that I could never explain to my family. I felt like I had two lives: my days were filled with cubicles and computers, my nights were spent with the cat, sit-coms, rum and coke, and lots of weed.
Too much weed. The pattern on the carpet in the office seemed to shimmy and slide, like a stream full of spawning salmon.
We discovered Amato’s cheese steaks. We were in there three or four times a week. I developed a pain in my side. “My guts is bad,” I would moan. I started missing a lot of work.
The doctor said it was gas. I disagreed. He started the tests: sonogram, upper GI, lower GI—after the barium in the backdoor, I decided it must be gas. I stopped eating cheese steaks and it went away.
I switched companies. For awhile, I took phone calls and fixed problems. Then, the Director of my department because Vice President of another. He took me with him. I was suddenly a software engineer.
Then I was senior software engineer. Then I was a lead engineer. It all happened so quickly. I became so big. I never realized that other people might be right when we disagreed. I had the ear of the VP.
I designed a large system for managing email blah blah. We threw it together. It actually worked, but nothing else did.
It was called a death march. Things began to fall apart. I switched departments and was promptly fired.
For a year there was nothing: I had a tiny apartment by the ocean. I had a rat who would come out in the middle of every night to dance in the kitchen, no matter how often I ran out and drunkenly yelled at him.
I sobered up, completely, and when I went back I took phone calls and fixed problems. I worked hard, worked well, and people took notice.
Someone encouraged me to apply for a spot in technical publications. I became a technical writer. I write doc; I teach people how to install things, configure things, and build things with our things. I write books for software engineers. It has been 25 months.
I no longer feel like I have to have two lives.
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