https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nasa-internship-twitter-controversyShorty hit me up a while back and I was slow to respond, but in light of a very brief conversation I had with him today I figured here is as good a place to celebrate my own personal victories as any. You all may or may not remember me being a total dork (lets be real, who here wasn't) and I always wanted to work for NASA. Well I finally did it. Almost a year ago, actually. Got a job at the Jet Propulsion Lab after interning and working on the Mars rover Perseverance. Now I'm working on the next big project Mars Sample Return and it's pretty dope to be able to say that.
But it's also not all rainbows and unicorns, and honestly I think I may have hyped it up a little too much to myself. The pay sucks compared to private industry, and the administration is a lot slower to respond to changing work norms (i.e. the large shift to work-from-home we're seeing is slower to roll out), and where other companies could offer other incentives like stock options, etc., JPL doesn't have that option to give. There's a lot of old-guard aerospace practices mixed with a lot of bureaucracy that can get in the way of just-want-to-get-malarkey-done attitudes, but there's hope. Some changes on the horizon that might offer a better balance between flexibility and mission assurance.
All told though, the worst part is that I thought being 6 hrs away from home would be fine, but i might as well be half way across the country. I miss my family and friends back home something fierce. I do still talk to them all regularly, but i miss the option of being able to walk to their house, knock on their door, then walk downtown and grab a beer at 2pm (grad school was great like that). I miss the small-town vibe and all that. I'm not a fan of LA.
All in all, it's not as dreamy or amazing as I had hoped, but there are some incredibly talented and intelligent people here who are making me feel like an idiot child for just existing in their sphere. There's so much to learn and such a wide variety of tasks to do that it's hard to be bored. I'll definitely be sticking around for a few years at least. After that we'll see.
Anyway, i still think about you all. Hope you're all doing well. I still haven't uninstalled Tribes either. Can't bring myself to do it. Maybe one day I should hop on...
*Edit:* I also feel the need to add: the biggest discovery I've made through all this is that despite my best efforts, my happiness is still not derived from my work. In fact, some days I feel pretty forking miserable and useless. I honestly can't say I know what makes me happy or fulfilled. I tried to trick myself into thinking it was work, but that only made things worse. What a forking cruel trick of life is that. There are days where I just feel empty inside and emotionally dead, like every day is just gray overcast. The best days are full of melancholy, and the worst absolute despair at the prospective life I have ahead of me. I'm alone, and some days I'm miserable.
Take my advice, kids. Don't rely on your job to bring you happiness or fulfillment. They say "Do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life", but those people either 1) were born into wealth and could therefore do whatever-the-fork they wanted, or 2) extremely lucky to find what they love in the first place.
fork.
