Do you want to know what I love?

• An extremely productive day, crossing several things off my to-do list
• Solving a tough problem
• Doing something noone has probably ever done before
• A successful implementation
• Helping someone solve a tough problem they are having
• Learning something new
• Working with people who also love these things
• I'll be honest - getting some recognition* for my efforts

Do you want to know what I hate?

• A day with no progress or worse (negative progress!)
• Being the only person worried about something, when clearly there is something to worry about
• Having my worries proven right, but getting no satisfaction from being right because it means more work for me
• People who don't try to solve a problem themselves before coming to me for help
• People who have no interest in understanding how something works, despite it being in their best interests to know
• Working like a dog for six months, juggling three projects, all of them successfully implemented, and not getting any recognition*

* A word about recognition: to me, recognition is simply that someone accurately understands how difficult a problem was to solve. Perhaps the word I am looking for falls somewhere in between recognition and respect. I don't need verbal or written kudos. I don't think, in today's work environment, that formal plaques or certificates need to be issued and decreed about something as normal as a software deployment. I'm not talking about someone thanking me for every little thing that I do. I am saying simply that, if I did something that it would normally take a team of 2 or 3 developers to do, that someone knows that. I guess what I really like is when someone understands the value of my work.

As much as we as human beings try to say, “I don't care what anyone else thinks.”, the fact of the matter is I do care about what certain people think. For almost every single person on this planet, there has to be 1 or 2 people who's opinions matter dearly - a spouse, a close friend. For some (like me), the total count of people who's opinions matter to me in some degree is in the dozens. (Of course, there are those who seem to care about too many people's opinions, which is a different problem entirely...)