Things have gone from bad to worse recently,
The other day my manager came in for a one to one, and also a meeting with the client, it was really awkward as the client are clearly just giving me grunt work to do - which they know I'm not happy with, but they paid an absolute fortune for the whole service, (twenty million dollars worth) and so when a small piece of that deal starts complaining - it's just an awkward problem they don't want to solve, which I understand - it's not their fault that they got the wrong person, they need a project coordinator/manager and not a uber tech who is easily bored and wants serious stuff to do.
I've never been in such a miserable state to be honest, last year I won a couple of technology awards (one with Juniper) and was really making progress, my problem now is that because I'm not doing anything technical I'm haemorrhaging knowledge and forgetting things, which frightens the life out of me. I just spent some money on a 16 core lab box so I can re-familiarise myself with everything again and focus on more on traffic automation and programmable infrastructure, as I had a few pet projects I was working on - specifically based around segment-routing and YANG.
On the flip side, I got through my third interview with a large tech company in Dublin - they're flying me over for a full day very soon, it's looking pretty promising - it will involve relocation but I'm fine with that, as it sounds very much like something they have to go through with every hire, and as such they have the means to help out in many ways. I have high hopes for it as they approached my via my blog, so they know what they're after - rather than a recruiter spinning everything just to get a hire, as I tend to be easily sucked into things sometimes..