terrbear.org

Sara and I went looking for houses today, and as we’re talking about the merits of one of the houses, she says to me, “I want to stay in this house for a *long* time.”

That got me thinking. First off, for anyone who knows me, I change jobs. More than most people you know. I don’t get fired; I go somewhere that looks like a better fit.

Initially, when I’d look for a job, I’d tell the guys, “I want to work here a long time.” I realize now that this makes no sense. What’s the point of committing for a time frame? I’ll commit until it doesn’t make sense to anymore. Time blocking 5 years of my life to justify a decision only serves to tell people that for the next 5 years, my head will be in the sand - consequences be damned.

I think agile development practices stem from the same idea. You can’t know what’s coming up in 6 months, or how your client or boss or whoever is going to respond to your product, so the idea is to make your product in a way where change catastrophe is minimized.

So, for our house, I’m trying to talk Sara into thinking more immediate future. We know we’re having another baby, and we already have Nate. That means we need at least 3 bedrooms, and preferably a play area. Were we to plan for the next 5 or 10 years, we’d need either 5 or 7 bedrooms (I want 6 kids; Sara wants 4), which would make for a house that (1) we can’t afford right now and (2) would be waaaaaaaaay too big.

For those interested, I really like the neighborhood at Forest Creek. It feels a little Stepford-Wives-y, but at the same time, the houses are really well designed. I feel like our house right now was poorly designed, in that there’s no real segmentation in the house. I like borders, and knowing clearly where I am. I’m not against open houses, but I like them to at least have some semblance of a partition.

As for a job, I think the same rules apply. Right now, I’m headed to employer B from employer ST because B satisfies what I want to do and how I want to do it. It’s not an indictment of any previous employer, it just means that over time (sometimes, shorter time increments than people would appreciate) criteria for a good work environment, good work hours, good location, good benefits, etc., change.

I think from the Enlightenment, people realized that it’s better to question things than to not, and that critical evaluations lead to crystalized purpose. If we start committing blocks of time to endeavors, we’re closing our eyes to whatever might happen in the unforeseeable future. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to go back to the 16th century. Kthx.