Job:

Change: How to instigate it? That’s the question I’ve gotta address before the middle of next year. That seems like a long time, but it’s really not, in terms of moving a career, particularly because career path determinations appear to be made much earlier in the process than I had previously thought.

I haven’t yet talked to anyone at work about how mindbogglingly frustrated I am over this whole intern->designer issue. I asked my boss if he’d have time to chat for a bit about an issue that’s really been bothering me, but so far, I haven’t heard back from him. But just to think out loud, really, the problem that I’m facing is twofold. One, that I need to know how to insure that my career actually moves me toward game design, and not away from it. Two, that I am almost insanely jealous of someone here who seems to have gotten the position that I’m striving for with almost no apparent experience, or qualification.

The problem is separating the two, because in my mind, they’re inextricably linked. The intern who ended up on the design team for next year breaks almost every notion of what I expected one needed to do to get that position. She’s not experienced, she doesn’t know the mechanics of the game, and she hasn’t, far as I know, displayed any particular skill or talent at game design. So the problem is that I have some internal notion of what one has to do to strive for a position like that, and her progression literally breaks every metric in my mind.

So, to talk to my boss, I have to approach it as, “Here’s what I want to get out of this job. Clearly, I’m either missing a path in, or have approached it in the wrong way.” The subtext would be that, “…because this unqualified, IMO, person has clearly gotten what I want, and I have no fucking clue why or how.” That part probably best left unsaid. But that second part is what really *bothers* me. It’s what eats at me every day at work. It’s what drives my job satisfaction into the ground headfirst, and stomps on it. It makes every day just that much more miserable, because I have to hear, see, and deal with the person who got what I wanted on a daily basis.

To be clear, she’s a nice person. She’s kind of a kissass, but beyond that, she’s a reasonably hard worker, and hasn’t done anything untoward that I know of. So let me be clear on that point. The namecalling is because this is my blog, and it’s an expression of my frustration, not a reflection of her character.

But so … I dunno. I suppose the way to approach it is to deal with the professional side of things – the career path issue, through my boss, and see if he’s actually going to go to bat for me, in terms of long-term career planning. If he’s not, then I have to start looking to plan my own career, somewhere else. If he is, then I need to find out then how to reconcile my pure, livid hatred for the situation that’s been created, and deal with it.

Still. It’s a pisser. Not happy about it at all.