Here's a picture that I took of the monsoon clouds looming over the mesa, behind my neighbor's house, from my back porch, with my cell phone in Panorama mode:

                             
It's scaled down to fit in this window (assuming that it does - fit in this window on your computer, that is) - it took the picture with a much larger resolution.

This isn't a gimmicky panorama where the camera just cuts out the top and bottom of the picture to make it look "letterboxy" - it's five different pictures that the cell phone camera took for me, and then stitched together for me as well.

The cell phone actually held my hand and told me what to do while taking this picture - I started at the far left (from the viewer's viewpoint) and took a picture. Then the phone put an empty circle on the left end of the picture:

                     
....then, as I scanned to my right, the camera filled in a circle and it moved with the view:



                              

then, right as I would move the viewfinder to the place where the filled circle filled up the empty circle:


                              
...the camera would go "CLICK" and it would take a picture FOR me, and then do it again - create a new empty circle, a new filled circle, and I'd bring them together, and "CLICK" - we (the cell phone and I) did this four times, then the camera stitched the pictures together into the panorama that you see above.

This is the kind of leadership that I like - absolute hand-holding, foolproof, step by step instructions, completely intuitive and easy to follow. If pressed, I can read instructions and follow them; if things get bad, I can come up with my own way to get something done (and that is sometimes the most fun. although it comes the least naturally to me).

If that last bit happens, then I can actually write down with the instructions.

What is unthinkable for me is for me to be the one to come up with the goal itself, and then to try to get others towards that goal.

That's called "being in management".

My friend-never-met Russ in Alabama is thinking about going to the dark side - now that he's been a programmer for a long time (hah! Russ isn't old enough to have done anything for "a long time" :) he's seriously thinking about making the move to management. He's even going to go back to school (to my old alma mater, UAH) to get a master's degree to do so. (Russ is not married, nor does he have kids. This means that Russ has time and money and energy and resources that husbands and dads can only dimly imagine).

I've thought about this several times - leaving the Leaf Node world and going into management - but it just seems like an impossible leap for me to make. I have a fuzzy sort of notion that it would be a good way to increase my contribution - with my experience, there's a notion that that experience, passed out to several other people, would make all of use more productive.

But. It. Just. Won't. Gel.

Some 8880 days ago, I made a semi-conscious decision to stop running my own life; that was, without a doubt, the best decision that I had ever made. Deciding to give up deciding was extremely effective - I recommend it to anyone else whose life is as unmanageable as mine was.

So, every time I consider going into management, I can hear Jonathon Edwards singing "Sunshine" from back in the 70s -

"He can't even run his own life
 I'll damned if he'll run mine.."

Were I to be a manager, I'd be looking into my direct reports eyes, and knowing that they were looking back into mine and that they would be thinking "sheesh, this guy's a loser - why should I pay any attention to what he says?" -- okay, maybe it's not that bad. But I certainly wouldn't be able to look into my own eyes, in a mirror, without having such thoughts.

I reckon I've reached the top of the curve of my professional life, along the Leaf Node/Peon/Underling/Minion career track - or (at least) I'm asymptotically approaching it, anyway. Simple desire to "do something better" would indicate that I'd have to make some sort of move. But then I think "Hey, I'm fifty years old. What's the sense in changing anything? I'd be dead before the change was over" so - like a plane waiting to take off - I am held back by dead weight on the one hand, and limited by not having a long enough runway on the other.

I reckon that if God wants me to do anything, He'll let me know. As I've heard it said, "I wouldn't worry about it - probably something will happen". So never mind. I'm dropping this line of thought. He talked Ethel into marrying me - I have no doubt that, if He decides that He wants me on a management track, He'll be able to let me know.