I’ve been back in the US over a week now, and I eerily feel as though I never left. As I’ve said before, I didn’t realize I missed so much of life here at home. As I read about the ongoing problems in Iraq, and I hear from my team members about various crises popping up on my project, I find myself reluctant to return.

Obviously I’m still going back, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard. I hope once I get back in country that these feelings will fade and I can focus on our objectives once again. If not, it will be much harder to actually get work done.

I think part of the problem is my disillusionment with the lack of institutional support we receive, and the project-specific turmoil that I left behind. For better or worse, though, that’s the reality of work for my employer, for the US government, and in hard post-conflict environments like Iraq and Afghanistan. If I find it insufferable I can always go home, but I don’t want to leave our Iraqi team.

Someday, whether it’s September or January 07 or February 07, I’ll come home. When that day comes, I’ve resolved to stop settling for ‘good opportunities’ that fail to engage me. I don’t want to put on a nice shirt and drive to an office every day. I don’t want to make stupid decisions to appease feckless bureaucrats. I don’t want to work for a company that doesn’t get technology, and doesn’t want to. I want to do meaningful technical work with people as good or better than me. I want leadership I can trust and get behind. I want work I can do anythere there’s broadband and power. I want to stop waiting for ‘someday’.

Of course, it takes more than a desire for something better to make it happen. I don’t have the network I once did, and don’t really know where to begin. My time in Iraq is time I’m out of touch with the pulse of the industry, and I’m certainly not working with cutting-edge technology, so I’ll be rusty and out of touch when I return. I’m reasonably confident I can get back into things rather quickly, but I’ll need an engaging and challenging job to make it happen. With any luck I’ll be able to find one, inshallah.