The Long Dark Night of the (Professional) Soul

I had a somewhat upsetting epiphany today.

Over the past couple of years, I've had the chance to take a number of job-provided training.  Some of it was mandated by The Job, and some was my choice.  In that time, I've noticed that even though I don't mind the classes in some cases and in others actually really *like* the class, I spend the days before and after in something akin to dread.  It creeps up on me and lingers around the time I take the class.

Today I realized what it was.

It's the awareness that I can't use the stuff I'm learning to improve my code, because The Job won't let me.

The Job has tight restrictions on the number, size, and type of code changes that can be made to released products.  Almost all of the things that need to be done to the code are non-trivial changes of infrastructure, medium to large refactorings, additions of many unit tests, etc.  All of which require Change Notices, which need approval for altering code that gets released to the customers.  And all of which will not pass the current standards, which basically are "Is some customer aware of it, and complaining about it?"

So I sit in class learning many new and wonderful things, and never get to use them in my main coding space.  And it makes me unhappy.