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How did I get to be so self-centered? I made my last post intending to give a quick review of "Iron Man" and ended up talking about myself and how great I am. Again.

When did this happen to me? Or rather, when did I do this to myself? I've had no lack of encouragement in the process of ego inflation recently. I have people on all sides of me demonstrating tremendous confidence in my abilities, people telling me how great I am, subordinates, superiors and peers alike.

I hear this from people who have a big stake in my success or failure, people who have a tangential stake and people who won't be impacted one way or another ... people who like me and people who dislike me ... people I know well, people I've met once or twice and people I don't know... people I see all the time, people I haven't seen in years and years and people I've never met.

The ones who dislike me and are irritated by my successes to date express their schadenfreude as a hope that I will someday bite off more than I can chew and screw up eventually. However, even for them, it's expressed as more of a hope than as an expectation. Sometimes this is in my hearing, sometimes it's behind my back.

I don't talk about my ambitions at work, but I don't make a big point of pretending that I'm not ambitious. I don't deny any possibilities with respect to my current or future career path; I just deflect the questions and decline to speculate. I never publicly admit the possibility of failure, but I always have a fallback Plan B and a worst-case-scenario Plan C, just in case. I don't put on airs and brag. I don't say, "Now that I'm the boss..." I just do my job, doing the hard parts and the simple parts as well as I can, making the tough calls as well as the easy ones. I want excellence and I work hard to achieve it, but I'm prepared to cut my losses, take my lumps and walk away from a disaster in the making.

So, with all of this, and all of the changes that I've been through recently, is it forgivable that I am spending a lot of time thinking about my place in the world? About where I am and where I might be going?

No, that's the wrong question. I've always been introspective, and it's reasonable to think and plan. The question is, is it forgivable that my introspection under the current circumstances has led me to the conclusion that I am on the verge of something big?

No, that's the wrong question again. It's not a problem to be on the verge of something big. Is it a problem to think that I personally am something big, or could become someone big? My Midwestern ex-Catholic upbringing cries out, "No, no, you are no better than anyone else!"

But what if I am? Is it wrong to face that fact and deal with things from that standpoint, rather than cling to false modesty and hide my light under a bushel? It's not like I'm a weapons manufacturer or a drug dealer. I like to think that I'm doing some good in the world.

One of my technicians told me she needed to find a new job, to be nearer to her husband (who lives in D.C. area). She observed that it was strange how, when she started working for me three years ago, she would tell people who she worked for, and no one knew who I was. Now, she doesn't even get past my first name and people say, "Oh, you work for HIM? What's he like?" When you are looking for a job, it is always better to be able to say that you were a technician for Dr. Famous as opposed to Dr. Nobody.

I feel as though the conclusions I've come to with regard to my own potential, both scientific and managerial/administrative, are pretty well justified by the track record to date. Aside from the chortling and marveling over the technology that I do with my plasma tech coworkers, it's only here on Slashdot that I indulge in flights of self-congratulatory fancy. This is semi-anonymous, so it's more or less without consequence professionally. I suppose I could just leave this in a written journal, but that's for true introspection, without even the possibility of feedback.

Maybe once things settle down, I'll get some perspective. Unfortunately, things never seem to settle down.