Turn, Turn, Turn

The other half of what my manager told me yesterday — right after he said that the work I’m doing now is what I was born to do — was:

“…and it won’t last.”

What he meant is that the project will change, the teams will mature, the corporate landscape will shift, I will change. A year from now we will face different challenges. We don’t know now what those challenges will be. All we know is that things will be different.

Heraclitus wrote “You cannot step twice into the same stream.” The stream is not the same from moment to moment; that much is obvious. And neither are you. A year from now, I will have different experiences, different strengths, different needs and desires. Even if the project is the same, it won’t push me in the same ways. Maybe, as it changes, it will challenge me in ways that I want to be challenged, and maybe it won’t. I don’t know, and right now, I’m not worried about it.

I’m enjoying my season in the sun right now, and — to further bludgeon the metaphor — I’m making hay while the sun shines. I will take advantage of it while it lasts, mourn it when it passes, and move on to the next thing when its time is over. I’ve seen this with the podcast, with online communities, with game groups, with hobbies, with events. There is no steady state. The key is to always be feeling for the rhythm and moving in time with the music.