Mental barriers, career growth, and being a "thinker" in a space.
I've worked at my current job for 22 years. Read my thoughts on that as a weird midpoint for my whole life here. This is not about that.
This is about the other thing barreling toward me. My desire to either:
- Become a recognized thought leader in an industry, or
- Give up, start over, and go build some new set of skills from zero however satisfying that would be to just do without asking anyone
I like thinking about, philosophizing over under around through, pretty much anything. I write as a way to organize my own thinking and shove ideas out into the world, which, as an introvert, is Not A Trivial Effort. Where previous attempts at "thought leadership" failed, in my estimation, was my complete lack of desire to constantly self-sell. I don't want to spend my time on social media if I don't have to (none of us have to), so there's always this strong internal friction sitting in the doorway. Add to that my utter, total, self-effacing disbelief that anyone would ever be interested in a single thing I have to say.... and you get a bubbling cauldron of "don't look at me please" fighting "I know cool shit you should think about."
It's exhausting.
What it's led me to, now, is an impasse. For the last 12 years I've been building my company's accessibility processes. Step by step. Brick by brick. Little cultural scuffle by little cultural scuffle until now, amazingly and blissfully and shockingly, the processes are durable. The expectations are known. The company just does what it's supposed to do here. It's incredible1. I'm proud of it. And that pride has let me step back from the day-to-day watchdog work into something more like a monitoring role. I'M divesting ownership across our massive divisions to the people who run them, working with them and my steering committee to keep the whole thing barreling forward without me holding the wheel.
It doesn't take a ton of effort these days.
The problem, oh all-reading eye, is that the next step one would (mayhap even should) take is to press outward into the world and show what we've built. Speak at conferences. Publish books. Make grand gestures to drag others up here with us (there are cats. and beverages.). BUT! That requires talking to people. And, probably the harder part, convincing my employer it's fine to talk in public about how we do what we do.
Anathema. Sacrilege. Pedagogy in this industry when you're not a developer or a doctor? Pshaw2. What greater shame could you bring to our midwestern roots than to think, even for a second, you might be good enough to talk about it to someone else.
So here I am, staring down a new cultural fight to get our (my) name out there. We did the work, and we could help other people do it too. OR! Because of course there are only ever two options: I drop everything, close the door on twelve years, and just vanish into new subject matter where I get to be a beginner again and feel good about it.
I don't want to fight another cultural battle at this company. It's already infuriating enough having to constantly remind people that yes, actually, we do need to make the visually-organized tool screen-reader accessible. Just because you built it sight-based doesn't mean it can only ever be sight-based3. That thought alone gives me existential dread.
And I don't want to start over in a new subject either. I love accessibility work. I'm good at it. I've made sea change at a corporation that likes to barrel ahead for the sake of barreling ahead, full stop, no destination required β and there's something in me that recognizes that instinct. Maybe even envies it. As intellectually engaging as being a n00b in a new subject can be, I think I'm just getting too old for that particular flavor of reckless. Let me expound upon my expertise instead. Let me lay at your feet a whole philosophy of accessibility and light a fire under the next generation of workers who need to give a shit about disabled people.
All of this is to say: I'm stuck in a mire of success and boredom, boxed in by silent walls at the place where I work now. Writing about it hasn't done much good without some internet evangelism running alongside it. The actual answer seems to be a sledgehammer to my own resistance β or maybe just barreling ahead anyway, the same reckless way the company does, and calling it loyalty.
Footnotes
And based on what I know from conversations with other organizations, conference leaders, and executives across a spectrum of industries β we are heads and shoulders above the rest. There are whole companies that still don't have basic accessibility testing expectations built into their software testing phases.↩
I did not get that Wordle either.↩
Also β not all screen reader users are blind, you dipshit.↩