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💾 Archived View for park-city.club › ~invis › phlog › 012-i-hate-computers.txt captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38.
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# I hate computers

In case anyone cares I got work again. Just first day weirdness. Whatever. I'm
doing good at the job, it's a pretty relaxed work environment, the tasks are
nice and interesting and I have a surprising amound of flexibility so long as I
just do the tasks. Which I do. I've done a *lot* here since I started in 2018.

But that's beside the point. The point is I'm realizing that I f-cking *HATE*
programming. It's fun, sometimes, if you prod me in exactly the right way (give
me a nice complex problem to chew on, or shove some retro tech in my face).
Hate might actually be too strong of a word. But yeah I can't do this for the
rest of my life. This sitting down for 8 hours a day thing, making charts show
the right data and lights flash the right color until the day I die thing. My
life is just XKCD 722 and I hate it.

A long time ago, I used to be into making video games. Sure, I liked to tinker
with the low-level bits, but there's also just that concrete satisfaction of

	making* a thing. Of seeing characters *you* made/love jump around and traverse

levels *you* made. A finished video game is a thing you can put in a box on a
shelf and people will buy and love and cherish it.

I find the less object-like the thing I'm working on is, the more I hate it.
Video games? Sure. That FPGA lab I had recently where I got to make actual LEDs
blink and do a concrete function? YEP. ...front end web dev? naaaah. Stupid
firmware for a stupid piece of junk nobody gives a crap about? No thanks. And
homework, a thing with literally zero practical application whatsoever? Hard no,
unfortunately. I guess also if the thing I'm making *genuinely helps*, like it
automates a whole department away sort of helpful, I'll be into that as well.

I guess I'm just coming to, honestly, *several* realizations, but first and
foremost that I find work most enjoyable when I'm actually, ya know, *doing*
things. When what I'm doing helps people, or makes them happier/safer/etc., and
I can *see* that happening. Again, the librarian thing again, I'd be *actually
physically helping people* find books/papers and organizing stuff and etc.

So, where does that lead me and my career? I don't know. My website? *shrugs*.
Did I even like programming, or did I just like making things and chose prog-
ramming because it was free and cool? I don't know. I'm surprised I didn't
write more, because as a kid I used to love writing fanfics and such. Or draw,
but yeah that's more discouraging. I was good at programming and with computers
there's an object works/doesn't work aspect to it. Yeah there's art to it,
architecting and documentation and test cases and blegh.

Is my entire career built on programming just being a thing I was good at and
that got me praise/internal smitteness from things working and being made?
I'm thinking about the Sonic R stuff again and, while I did enjoy it (I had to,
you think poking around in a hex editor for hours would be fun otherwise?) I
realize that the end product was my motivation more so than the process. And
now, like, who the crap cares about blue hedgehog racing game '97? Not me. Heck
the Park City thing was because I wanted to provide that space for my friends.
And now it's just churn and maintenence and I'm fine with that from time to
time but I can't. F-cking. DO THIS for the rest of my life...

help i'm having an identity crisis. again.