A Test Of The Emergency Disappointment System II

Yesterday marked the abrupt end of my professional relationship with the computer game company I joined in mid-May. (and relocated across the country for) I won't pretend that my emotions are not upset, there is presently a sense of sadness and disappointment that the collaboration didn't work out.

Mozart is said to have composed entire symphonies in his head before furiously scribbling them down. Another anecdote has Michelangelo saying he "saw the angel in the marble and then carved to set him free". This is how I write software - I grok a given system as a whole over a period of time and then expend myself in a fit of creative coding that sometimes spans 24-hour periods. I like me this way - it is my own personal garden patch of genius. (we all have one somewhere, neglected or not)

I kind of wish I had done a better job communicating my style to my handlers at the company. I must have seemed a bit insubordinate when they asked to see incremental progress occurring every day in the codebase and all they got back was (in effect), "Just wait, you'll see what I can do!" In the end, the system I was working on was proven and I got buy-in for the next steps, but someone somewhere had already decided to drop the hammer. The termination was handled by the company's legal counsel, "without cause"; nobody I worked for directly attended the exit interview or gave any feedback. It was certainly well within their rights to handle the matter this way - like virtually all Americans my employment arrangement was "at will", meaning I could have left them at any time for no given reason as well.

I say "kind of wish", yet I don't really wish. Like Bono of U2, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I'm looking for a situation where the Mozarts and Michelangelos of code can brood and spew their masterworks together with the only criteria being whether it is beautiful and it works when it all comes together. Perhaps that stand will push me into Open Source or to starting my own technology ventures. (something my friends must be bored of hearing me perpetually threaten to do)

I am satisfied that both I and my former employer each did his best. The company is made up of a very sharp group of people and I would not want to be in their market space when they launch their product.

Yes, I used the word "disappointed" in the first paragraph and that is what is real today. Yet it is not "I" who am disappointed. Though the emotions are upset, though they calm and tempest and calm again, the self is not the emotions. The self is the one who observes and honors them and then whispers, "This, too, shall pass."