Not enough to mess with the overall solidly great feeling I've got now, but it's definitely there.
My job title is "process analyst".
Which sounds like a pretty self-defining title, except... it's not.
Yes, there's room for improvement in our processes.
But I don't have the power to enact these improvements.
Just to make them known.
And summarily shot down.
Or we can't do that because "wE cAn'T jUsT fIrE pEoPlE".
But truly, the biggest sad comes from the fact that I just can't do... anything.
My accesses at work are such that I'm confined to the very narrow swimlane of my assigned duties.
Which in this case, is writing "user stories":
In agile software development, user stories are concise, informal descriptions of a software feature written from the end-user's perspective. They capture the "who", "what", and "why" of a requirement, essentially outlining how a user will benefit from a particular feature.
Which is fine.
I enjoy writing.
Creating.
But the development team has access to the same system I do in addition to their development environments.
So they can create many more things.
They have the ability to, when bored, make a random application with no guidance.
And if they ever got bored of that, they could leave their swimlane and come into mine.
Anybody in this damn office can write user stories.
And mama bear has been here long enough to establish her own system.
And her system is great. It's simple to understand, even simpler to execute, and it's elegant.
So there's no challenge in it.
As a child, I wrote a letter to Nintendo asking them if they'd send me stuff about game development, because I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up.
I remember going to the library at school and checking out books about programming.
And the fact that the interest/passion/whatever-the-fox is still with me decades later?
That's... amazing. For me.
I hyper fixate on and ditch so many things, especially in these last few years.
I want to create.
But I can't.
Not here.
I think it's time to call that lady at the city of Virginia Beach back. See if we can work together on something.
Maybe get outta the current quagmire I'm in.
Eh.
We'll see.
"And this could be a stepping stone for you to get a developer job later on," I remember the site lead telling me.
I wish he hadn't said that.
Because I don't see it happening.
Not here.
Man.
-1.