I'm bored!

It's one of the reasons why I started this blog.

In between testing, having nothing to do at work for a week can be a liberating experience. After months with nose to the grindstone, one can relax (one should take time out anyway, of course), look around, see what other people are doing.

After two weeks, one may begin to chafe: should one find something to do? Is it worth starting something before one gets dragged back into the production ratrace?

After a month of relative inactivity, anxiety sets in. After all, you're getting paid for sitting on your expanding rump (comfort food cravings) surfing the net and generally doing nothing! Surely, somebody, somewhere, is going to notice? All you can do to counter that is to let management know you're not very busy and listen as, with typical 'finger on the pulse' insight, they act surprised, mutter something about seeing what needs to be done, and then forget about you. Hazards/advantages of working in a large-ish organisation.

Does anyone else need a hand? I ask. The trouble with this place is that everyone is so budget conscious that they won't even take on an extra body for nothing! (sheesh!)

Three months. OK this is getting serious. Shall I start looking around elsewhere? Not a bad idea, although, Micawber-like, we are in imminient expectation that something will turn up. Meantime, one can do some serious self-improvement. Not those rubbishy courses on personal interactions that are whacked together to fulfil the training requirements, we'll get some serious programming skills under our belt. I start investigating Agile methodologies and, as luck would have it, some in-house Python enthusiasts get me interested in that as well. This leads to a brief, but useful couple of months work on another project.

Then, phase 1 ends, as does the budget, and I'm back to... testing! Only, it's even less enthralling than before and others realise it also because, after another month or two, I'm let off that as well.

Back to management. Same uneasy shuffle. Some half baked internal projects follow.

Arthur C Clarke once observed that a truly educated mind is never bored: the presumption being that it can always find something with which to occupy itself. I've managed it for a year or so, but I think I've got ot the end of my education.

Definitely time for a change!