Passion vs Prospect

Recently people like to ask me comparative questions ^^| … on top of it, it is always infront of audiences which I think is a bit difficult to reply. There is no right or wrong answer, but I find it just hard to articulate. Is a journey … there were happy times, emotional times, difficult and sad times but we overcome it.

Perhaps the answer might be very different at the beginning but now I started to appreciate things more and also my passion and joy @ work came back. It is still not exactly the same as the past but I think thats just because I became more jaded now than before. There are certain things I will be concerned about and certain things I will just have my reserve on hearing/receiving it.

I think the passion and joy I had in the past was more pure & simple, like a young one being very excited about the job, the project and the team. Now, it is a little different, I like the technical and solution design stuff that I do and thus have passion and enjoyed my current work + also appreciated that my bosses pushes back & protected us from certain things so that we can have some work life balances. There are some differences though … like I say, think is because I am more jaded now than before

The other thing that I noticed is that people thought I chose where I want to go because of relationships. Mmmm…well in a way who you work with is important but it doesn’t meant that I will do something I don’t like because of that. Not sure why I gave people such perception … is true that friendship means a lot to me but it doesn’t mean that will dictate my career.

10 years ago, I chose a course that none of my friends chose, not a single bit of hesitation other than feeling sorry to my parents for not going JC just because of my passion & urge to learn IT & web. When I pick where I want to be now, is purely because of what I like to do at that time also…frankly…most of my friends go for banks if they wanna join FI.

I was again shocked … when I heard ” i know you were apprehand because you are very close with … ” … I was like “huh ?” in my heart. Yes, I enjoyed friendship a lot @ work, I may chose to go certain places (or rather follow certain people) whom I think is worth learning from for a short period of time (yes short term if the scope is something that I know is not what I want to do) … however, I liked application support … the challenges, the technicality and bringing differences to people. In the first place why I liked IT was because we can create (make something out of nothing ^_______^) and make life easier for people or enable things to happen (impact people’s life). The power of creation is indeed wonderful.

okie…now then I am entering the actual topic ^^|:

I liked to do programming but I wonder if now I go back to do programming (not changing job just potential change in job scope), am I moving backwards in terms of career progression? No disrespect to programmers, just that in my current place it doesn’t seems like there is a lot of prospect for a full time programmer. I wonder … I knew once I started to do programming I won’t have much time for other things, I wonder in terms of career progression, am I moving backwards for looking forward (yes I look forward to do doing it^^|) to own and code my own program?

Another consideration was, after running certain activities, I realised I might have potential in another area … which it seems like there is more prospect than a technical job. However, weighing the two, I still like application support more thus I continued the path. Nonetheless, it puts me to wonder if I should consider moving there in future?

This is my 3rd year here, is time I ask myself what do I want to achieve after 5 years time? Instead of 5 years, i give myself 3 years (since it is aready 3rd year here liao) … to achieve it.

Can I continue to pursue what I like to do … years later?