On being a whippersnapper

Despite being on the latter end of three decades on this planet, there is nothing like my field and the small town (weirdly enough it is small) to make me feel like a wet behind the ears consultant trying to Old Men of the world their job. I swear the last two crisis meetings I’ve had, the average age of the room must have been around 50 and I have more hair on my chest than all the heads in the room barring mine. Everybody seems to know of everyone else and leading meetings in such an old boys club is nerve-wracking.

What is surprising is how many of these people cannot think out of the box and how many keep turning to me to get things done. Now this doesn’t mean their bad at their jobs, the vast majority are excellent to a fault, but the bigger picture is something that seems to elude them. In a way it provides me with some comfort. I’ve never been the kind of person to want to specialize. The thought of being a dentist or mortgage broker or something similar scares the crap out of me, doing the same thing over and over again.

I need variety, on a large scale to keep me enthusiastic. Even in a job as varied as the consulting I do, things have started to pale. It might be the economy, the lack of big clients but things are boring now. Stressful and boring. Not a good combination, fingers crossed for a big fuck up of a project with a client looking to get shit done by spending money. Like a headache subdivision, in the coastal zone, in the mountains with a couple of access problems and pissed off county staff. Now that would make the stress worthwhile, for a bit longer.

I think I went off-topic there.