I’ve been feeling adrift lately and have spent a fair amount of my time thinking during my walks about why. Something I’ve started to coalesce around is the idea of needing to feel needed. This idea of being in service to others and how that’s been a big part of my life probably since I became an uncle years ago.

At my last job this was one of my favorite aspects. When I could offer something on a code review that made it a little better or led to a discussion about why one approach was taken over another – sometimes just leading to clearer documentation about why the decision was made for the next time someone looks at that snippet of code. When someone I’d been mentoring had that turn that signaled movement towards the next stage in their career – or better yet got promoted to the next level in the organization. Or when a designer or product manager would ping me on slack and I’d get the wonderful distraction of picking apart a problem with them and collaborating on a solution that neither of us may have arrived at alone, explaining technical tradeoffs and learning what concerns and processes they have approaching it from their end.

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. That is to have succeeded.” 
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think about this quote a lot. Not in the sense of my career – I’d like to believe I’m humble enough to realize that I never had that profound an impact on a colleague. But by being in service to people I work with, my family, etc I have learned to better embrace the concepts that I search for in others. Empathy, kindness, and grace to start. With my career specifically I always try to embrace a parallel concept – “leave it better than you found it”. Try to make the snippet of code or component or feature you’re working on a little less frustrating for the next person that finds it. That might mean increasing scope slightly to clean up some code around it or pulling out some redundancy to DRY it up or even just a few lines of documentation that will guide someone to the why in minutes what may have taken you hours to get to.

But the idea of being needed in my career and my personal life have overlap. Being there for people I care about and embracing the ideals I desire allows me to do the same for colleagues, something I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t very good at early in my career. Perhaps maturity, or perhaps just introspection over time on how I wasn’t the human I wished I had been. Conversely being needed in my career, for a while, led to increased responsibility which led to higher compensation which allowed me to financially – not just emotionally – help out people and causes I wanted to.

That has been one of the most humbling experiences of whatever this period of my life is – whether it turns into a long sabbatical or an early retirement I’m honestly not sure of day to day. But not having that security of a constant income has led me to be less generous. I understand this is a privilege – it was a blessing that I was ever able to be in a position to help others when many people I know struggle just to meet their basic needs. But the fact that I once was able to and now don’t leads to disappointment in myself. That I’m letting others down even when, deep down, I know they don’t see it that way. That I’m squandering the skills or talent or whatever you want to call it that led to placing me in that position by not securing my next opportunity and income from it.

Which leads back to needing to be needed and feeling adrift. Because of my circumstances I’ve been forced mostly to only be accountable for myself. I am as selfish as anyone, so this should be easy. But what I’ve found is I just don’t seem to care as much about myself as others, specifically those I care about. I don’t get the same return from my successes as I do from the successes of others I’ve helped. I’d like to think this is a good trait and not some sort of ego. Either way that’s where I’ve found myself lately.

So I spend a lot of time thinking up and mostly rejecting ideas about how to be seen in this market. To stand out so that others feel they need me and want to hire me. About side gigs or “hustles” that maybe I can build into something that together can replace some of what a full time position would give me – both in income and feeling needed – in case it never comes. Especially if I could turn writing from something that not only brings joy, but financial reward.

I specifically remember a few years ago, after finally being recognized and promoted to senior level at the company I worked for feeling I’d finally “made it”. That the company, which was known, recognized me as someone that mentored and built up colleagues and provided more value than cost. That my career had been on a trajectory that, while slower than I’d hoped and with many bumps along the way, had finally reached a point where I would be desired by companies. The last two years have done significant damage, if not outright done away with, that confidence while bringing back my old friend impostor syndrome in force.

Most likely I was just deluding myself. We live in a world where unless someone vouches for you it’s hard to get noticed without generating the type of attention that I’ve never been good at getting. Maybe because I’m so reserved or maybe, as the dark part of my mind tells me late at night, because I was an impostor all along and it finally has caught up with me. I honestly don’t know.

I just know when I’m in the deepest moments of despair and I ask the universe for help, it’s to be needed. To be valued. To be wanted. To be able to show that my contributions have value and that I can make the world a better place – maybe not in a powerful way, but in some small way that makes someone else breathe a little easier.

I hope I get that opportunity again. I hope that I’ve been a good colleague and the next time some former colleague’s team needs someone, I’m one of the people that springs to mind. I hope that if I do get that next fair offer, I do my best to earn it and appreciate it everyday. Finally I hope that if I do I continue to pay it forward – teaching, mentoring, building other’s confidence in themselves, advocating, and championing.