Dumb

WordPress is hard. I sort of want to create a blog space that's just right for me. But though there was a time I would have enjoyed tinkering around to figure it out, that time has passed. I just want it simple, and to work. Yet from the WP dashboard I can't even figure out how to create a blog, much less configure one. This means I'm dumb now, and am pretty much finished with technology. My smartphone is a useful tool and toy, and it's not rocket science to design development and validation systems for upcoming generations, as I do. But otherwise, I just need a place to express myself, and this already works, so I guess I'll just keep it.

This is a drag because my employer and all other employers want people who are excited about technology, who use technology, who are impassioned to develop ever better technology ... and I just don't care about that shit. It's a drag because the job I have is the only job I have the energy to get decently paid for, but I won't last much longer faking it, and I am in no wise financially ready to retire. Oh, yes, I've been all doom and gloom about getting washed out for years. But it's more serious now than ever, because they merged the phone and tablet divisions, and are now trying to align projects with resources, and they do not align, and when efficiency moves are made to align them, people who aren't excited and energetic enough to work super hard in this fast-moving and highly competitive business are going to be the first to go. That, quite obviously, will include me.

Then what? It's easy to talk confidently and say I'm smart and that I'll figure something out. But the world is littered with engineers in their late fifties who are no longer employable, for reasons that people outside that field apparently don't understand. It makes perfect sense to me. Engineering is a field that requires strong focus and sometimes long hours. It requires a great deal of energy when in a competitive mode, and when seasoned managers see their choices as either young engineers who have passion and hunger and long careers to build up, and old engineers who have expenses and issues and are just trying to stave off disaster, the choice is clear: Go with the youngsters. This is too serious a business for anyone to worry about the old guys' circumstances. Yes, they bring the very real advantages of experience and maturity. But this is a fast-moving world, and the competitors are moving very fast, and are doing it with thousands of young engineers from countries where there are no old engineers to speak of thanks to rapid societal change, and we need to fight back. You don't send the big old warhorses into the crucial skirmish.

Now I'm being all negative. Well, it's a dumb day.