I’m 33 and I still don’t have a clear idea about what I am going to “do” with my life.

I suffer from what I think is a very common problem for many people, a lack of focus! I was lucky enough to go to a pretty good university in the UK, where I met a lot of people who seemingly did not have this problem. Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, Bankers, Political Activists, Writers, Journalists, all of them with a very clear goal in mind and many of whom are now realizing their dreams and doing exactly what they planned to do. Of course every job has it’s downside, the boring part that you’d rather not do and I’m sure this is completely true for each and every one of my friends. Nothing is perfect. Nonetheless, I often used to view them with a mixture of admiration and jealousy. It must feel good to do something that you feel so passionately about.

Thankfully, despite my rather flighty nature, I managed to fulfill the requirements of my degree and finished university with a Masters in Engineering Mathematics. Further than that there were also a number of aspects that I enjoyed very much, such as the intricacies of chaos theory, or computational fluid dynamics. I can’t for the life of me remember how to do all of that high level abstract mathematical analysis nowadays, but I did emerge with a useful knowledge of programming which has formed the principal basis of my career ever since. Given the importance of computers and digital information these days, it is a skill which means I never find it too difficult to find a good job. Lucky me.

After finishing university, for lack of any other big ideas I wandered off to London to join many of my friends in the race to the top of that oh so greasy corporate pole. I started as a temporary data-entry monkey, filling in the address details of patients who required transportation home from a north London Hospital. I then worked as a Pricing Analyst in a telecoms company, pouring myself over enormous, complicated excel spreadsheets, trying to ensure that the profit margins remained respectably high so that the big boss could afford to drive his shiny new porsche. I joined the ranks of an American credit rating company and played my part I the financial crisis of 2008 by providing spurious financial analyses to companies such as Northern Rock and RBS. Then, I decided that London was not for me. All that focus on money and career, as is typical for most London inhabitants, was wasted on someone who cared so little about such things, and so I jumped ship.

I spent the next 5 years in what I can only describe as some type of sun-drenched romance novel, as I sped about the city of Barcelona on a 125cc scooter, teaching English in various businesses dotted around the city. It was a great time! 25-30 hour weeks, eternal sunshine and as much paella as I could eat! I set about becoming proficient in Spanish, so as to maximize my opportunities and attained a high level of fluency pretty quickly. One of the great things about the job itself was the sheer amount of different people I met. I taught Doctors and admin staff in the Multiple Sclerosis unit of Barcelona’s biggest hospital, workers in a rubber factory, a prominent architect involved with the Sagrada Familia, the head of the Catalan IT Health Department, and even the Managing Director of one of the biggest retirement home providers in Spain. Given that the requirement for most of these classes was to keep them talking, a lot of what we talked about revolved around their careers. I found that those who really loved what they did, given the opportunity, could speak forever about it. Futhermore, they were enthusiastic about most aspects of their lives and ready to communicate almost every little detail. Conversely, those people who clearly did not enjoy what they did, were lethargic and difficult students who seldom wanted to talk about anything. They seemed to go through their lives on auto-pilot, doing only what was required and then passing out in front of the television in the evening and at weekends. The worst cases seemed almost dead inside.

After 2 years of teaching English I stumbled back into a more analytical line of work as a result of a chance meeting with the girlfriend of a guy who ran a very small web marketing company in Barcelona. He employed me, initially as a business systems analyst, whereupon I started work on improving his invoicing system. Due to the way he paid people I was also forced to become self-employed, something which suited me well. I also continued teaching English and very much enjoyed the juxtaposition of working with people and then sitting alone at a desk immersed in the complexities of computer programming. A few years went by and the company started to grow and I found myself with a growing interest in web design and development. In 2010, I all but abandoned my English teaching pursuits and took another job in a medium sized, Spanish human resources company where I developed my first ever website application, http://www.staffhotel.net. As with many startup web projects, the business idea failed to take off for commercial reasons and the project was shelved a year and half later. Luckily, at the same time, the web marketing company was looking for a new Lead Developer for a new contact they had recently won. I got the job, more on the basis of my potential than my actual experience, and we started work on what became known as http://www.olocode.com.

Working for such a small company has certainly provided me with a valuable number of insights into how to run a company, and how to do it well. The two directors pay such an excessively pedantic attention to detail that at times it can often be infuriating! And yet, I realize that in order to produce something of quality, it is precisely this attitude that is required. Chef’s with 3 Michelin stars don’t get them by doing things half-assed, they plan and execute each dish down to the last tiny little detail. Concert pianists don’t play “more or less the right notes” when faced with an audience of thousands of people, they play every single note AND pause with absolute perfect precision and timing. This level of attention to detail can often be difficult to achieve without a total dedication to what it is you are doing. I’m sure it It is their passion that drives these people to this degree of obsession with their art. Of course, that doesn’t make it easy, musicians must practice for hours on end, surgeons must overcome enormous levels of stress and the directors of the company where I work, work at least 60 hours a week, if not more sometimes!

So where does that leave the rest of us? Those of us who are not super-passionate about anything, or passionate about a lot of different things and can’t really decide which they prefer. I enjoy my job as a web developer, it is engaging and presents me with new challenges on a regular basis. I have learnt a lot about working with other people, about my strengths and weaknesses as a person and about the right way to do things well. The job has pushed me outside of my comfort zone, which is where you start to feel a sense of achievement, where you start to feel alive, instead of plodding though the day, mindlessly performing one task after another. Am I passionate about it? Sometimes. Does it light up the inner depths of my soul? Here, I would have to say no. The truth is that there are a lot of things I enjoy doing, programming, writing, talking to people, playing the guitar, but I could never say that I am totally obsessive about either one, I need balance of all of these things.

So what am I going to “do” with my life? Live it I suppose…