11–20 of 83 posts
If you want to work on something different, you can only do that by getting a different job, either in the same company or at another one. If you stay where you are, you know you won't get what you want, so you need to make a move.
With that out of the way, and at risk to your cognitive load (by adding something else to your life), have you considered taking up a hobby/interest that is unrelated to your profession, and unrelated to the EE and Sec. learning that you're doing? It might sound silly, but maybe you need to activate other parts of your brain - hence a hobby might do the trick. Alternatively, if you want to dive into your learning path...have you considered contributing your time or code, etc. to an open source project that is aligned with your security learning? This could get you some real-world experience in security, enable you to connect with a network of people for future (hopefully more fulfilling) job, help you feel good about donating time to some open source goodness...and ultimately distract you from your dayjob...at least until you're ready to jump. ;-)
Take a long weekend every few weeks, go to yosemite. Or fly to vegas and cut loose. Pick up golf or pickleball or whatever. Make some friends who aren't engineers and live a bit.
Then you can come back to work with a fresh mind and care enough to get your shit done well.
For example in my job (quite dull) I automated some data collection, stored the data in a database, created a web app to present data from the database, ran it all on a server etc. None of it was anything my boss would have given me as an explicit task, but it was useful stuff that I could make a case for. It was also stuff I hadn't done before and was interested in learning how to do.
Granted, the weight of crappy project management decisions eventually became too much for me to put up with, but for a while I quite liked going in to work and setting up my mini-projects.
This is called burnout, you don't fix it by doing more work - including self study. Take a long weekend every few weeks, go to yosemite. Or fly to vegas and cut loose. Pick up golf or pickleball or whatever. Make some friends who aren't engineers and live a bit. Then you can come back to work with a fresh mind and care enough to get your shit done well.
1.)Have kids. 2.)Work at doing something else, since you clearly don’t like what you’re doing. Looks like you’re already doing that, so just keep going. Could your physical activity and health be what’s affecting your mental state?
Observe your situation (gather details of the 'problem') & you'll likely naturally make some headway at resolving your difficulties.
Example:
Why did you take the job in the first place?
What excites you about the current job?
There are many reasons to be de-motivated. Something wrong about the job. Something about you. Something that's unconscious, for you, it seems currently. Focus on observing the flow:
* your sensory experience ("my butt really hurts today sitting in this chair")
* => thoughts ("this job requires that I spend a lot of time backing-up what I'm working on with evidence of progress, for the sake of my Manager's approval, and for my Manager's own upward-mobility")
* => evoked memories ("when I was young, Rob took my pencil and claimed I had stolen it from him in the first place")
* => feelings ("this job offends me")
* => and follow-on thoughts ("to be successful at this job I'm going to have to become a different person than who I am now, how am I going to do that, do I want to do that. I really prefer that people just trust me, and not require proof and evidence that I am Good at my Job.").
My mind often has a general Sense > Thought > Memory > Feeling flow in my experience.
1.)Have kids. 2.)Work at doing something else, since you clearly don’t like what you’re doing. Looks like you’re already doing that, so just keep going. Could your physical activity and health be what’s affecting your mental state?
It's good that you're taking classes and are constantly learning, but consider that in this season of burnout those (vocationally related) activities could be contributing to the problem.