One of those days
I should be happy, I have an assignment with challenging tasks, upgrading custom code that uses SDKs that are close to or have passed into End-of-life. The code needs to be brought up to date as the runtime it runs on needs to be upgraded as well, with a EOL date within a few months.
I get asked about stuff that colleagues are working on but are never considered to be a resource, never considered to be added to those projects as a team member, but the questions keep coming, "how would you build this?", "do you have experience with [product/project name]?" and most times I can respond right away, because I've worked with it or have touched on it ..
I guess I feel disappointed, that I'm not directly involved, that I'm not joined to teams that do work with these things I get asked about.
I'm still happy though, that I have things to do that actually get billed for hours, after spending most of the time off the clock since June, almost 6 month twiddling thumbs, do short gigs of a week or so and studying for certification exams.
I dunno. Not feeling satisfied. Everything just feels blah.
Later today I'm having a check-up meeting with my manager, he's gonna ask how I feel and how things are going, I'm gonna put on a mask and say that everything is peachy and going good .. we're gonna joke around and he's gonna suggest stuff that I need to work on .. also add some opinions from the management team about my work. Then we exit the room and everything goes back to how it was minutes before entering the room.
My manager is an old colleague, we have worked together for years, we first bumped into each other 2004 or so, when he was hired as a consultant to temporarily fill a position when my then colleague flunked out (started to drink heavily and stopped coming to work, leading to being fired). Later we became colleagues at another employer and we both quit and joined current employer with about 15 months in between.