It’s time to write a new Spin post, but I’ve found I don’t have anything I want to say. There’s no skill I want to teach and no framework I want to explain. I have a long list of potential topics, but it feels more and more like it sort of doesn’t matter. It’s fleeting. Some of it feels nearly irrelevant in the age of AI. Some of it feels irrelevant given the state of the industry. And some of it feels irrelevant because I’m just so tired.
But where I find myself is an interesting place, strangely similar to when I started out in my career.
I was ambitious, but lost.
When I got started, I didn’t have goals for a technical, professional career behind a computer. I didn’t know yet that I was good at making sense of chaos, a skill that would serve me well in visual design, writing code, usability testing, information architecture, and more. I didn’t know about any of those things at all. I was ambitious, but lost. I needed to make money. I had analytical, logical, and creative talents and skills, and I was willing to learn. I heard web design might be good for me, and I started applying for freelance gigs online.
Clients would post a list of twenty qualifications that I couldn’t meet, but I would apply anyway, going through them line by line, commenting frankly on what I knew, what I didn’t know, and what I was willing to try. I was pleasantly surprised to find that rather than building doubt in my abilities, my frank honesty built trust instead. Potential clients knew I wouldn’t claim something I couldn’t do, and when they worked with me, they learned quickly that I’d follow through on what I said I would do.
I’ve seen a lot.
That was a couple of decades ago, and in that time, I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve been naïve and underpaid, but grateful for work in a bad economy. I watched the industry boom with the rise of social media and smartphones. I’ve learned firsthand about feature factories, putting my all into projects, only to learn that no one would use them and they were just part of the sales machine. I’ve watched technologies and frameworks come and go.
Through it all, I didn’t know where I was going, but I believed I was getting somewhere worthwhile, so it was okay.
But life kept finding a way of slowing me down.
I’ve been getting back to myself.
Years ago, after getting divorced, I could barely focus. I called it “screen staring.” I’d start working, lose focus what felt like 10 seconds later, and realize a few minutes after that I was just sitting there staring at the screen. Then I’d try again. Over and over.
Somehow I finished a complicated project in that state of mind. I didn’t have time for all the extra ideas and side initiatives I normally had, but the project was on time, and it was a job well done. Nobody seemed to notice anything was wrong. But I knew this wasn’t me, and I needed to get back to my best self: focused, energetic, and always improving.
Then I went back to school, taking advantage of an opportunity with an employer who sponsored employee education. Academics had always been easy and motivating for me, but this time, I felt like a much lesser version of myself, working at my very limit of focus and energy. I felt like I hardly knew what I was doing. But somehow I got through it with very good grades. Still, I felt diminished, like I was running on fumes, waiting until I could recover and become the better version of myself I was supposed to be.
The challenges kept coming.
I became a guardian in a difficult family situation, with all of the complications that came along with it. I built networks of support, but they kept falling away. I’ve found myself isolated, burned out, and breaking down.
My health has been an increasing challenge, with chronic fatigue and back pain, and no easy answers. Back pain! Who would have thought that such a thing could give me anxiety about meeting with clients?
“What if I can’t tolerate their chairs? I can’t just stand when everybody is sitting, can I? And I can’t just sit on the floor. Can I find another room to stretch?”
“How bad is it? I think I’m doing OK, but am I really? Actually, I don’t think I’m doing OK at all. But I’m getting the work done – the work is good. So is it okay? Is it?”
Little by little, with some help and some setbacks, I’ve continued to find ways to get through another day, another week, another month. Somewhere along the way, I’ve quietly given up on getting back to some old version of me, or on becoming a new, optimized one. I just keep taking the next step with what I have.
I’m the person I was looking for.
But here’s the crazy thing. When I look around at what I’ve done, I see projects with great outcomes and clients who want to continue working with me. So much of it has happened when I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, as a person or a professional. At my lowest, I was honest, and I was enough, just like when I started out. There was so much I didn’t know, but I was honest, I did my best, and that was more than enough.
I keep thinking that the person struggling is a diminished version of me, but actually, I’m realizing that the person bringing the most useful things to the table has been the person doing the work in the mud all along.
The mud is where we work.
When you have limitations, you have to prioritize very carefully, or everything falls apart. You get honest about what’s possible, you hold many perspectives at once, you weigh pros and cons, and you take small steps and adjust instead of counting on a rigid plan.
The way that I work through the mud, through the constraints, that is one of my greatest values, and I’ve had a lot of practice.
The tech industry looks a lot like me at times. Opportunity and potential, followed by uncertainty. Layoffs, and AI changing the rules faster than anyone can keep up. And like me, a lot of us are either trying to get back to how things used to be, or waiting for some optimized future.
We often strive for ourselves, our teams, and our processes to reach some stable, optimized state where everything runs smoothly and efficiently. But that state is temporary at best. Changing requirements, competing priorities, disappearing resources, disagreements, miscommunication, and restructuring are simply part of the environment we work in. That mess is not a failure. The mess isn’t an interruption to the work. The mud is where we work.
One Step
So here I am, sort of back where I started: no plan, no framework, honest about what I don’t know, and willing to take the next step.
And maybe that’s the best advice I have to offer. Take one step. A step toward yourself, toward the truth of where you are, what you can do, and what you need. Sometimes that means doing the work. Sometimes it means asking for help, trying something new, changing direction, or taking a break. You can’t control where every step leads, but you can learn from it and then take another step.
Stepping toward yourself isn’t self-absorption. It’s what makes teamwork possible. When I’m honest about where I’m standing, whether that’s a frank observation or an expression of a limitation, other people have something real to work with.
Not everyone will meet you there. But we’re all in the mud together, trying to make sense of what we have and what we can do. The question isn’t how we can get out of the mud and finally become who we’re supposed to be. It’s what we can do from here. One step at a time, with what we have, is enough.