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Hello gracious reader, how are you doing?
I haven't written anything on here for quite a while, despite intentions otherwise. I would mostly chalk this up to esoteric technology BS. I opted into the Gemini protocol for simplicity in the hopes of increasing my public output, but I haven't been able to entirely give up on HTTP either. This leaves me in the current state where I want to have my writing available over both protocols, but I haven't found an off-the-shelf solution that works for my setup, and I haven't been motivated to build said solution yet either. I apologize. This has very little to do with what's going on in my world or anything qualitative about my experiences; with the one caveat that it is impeding me communicating with you.
On that note, I've had a weird relationship with technology recently. I have in the past generally considered myself to be a "technologist" -- that is, someone who engages with modern technology, generally understands it and is interested in using it. The past decade has really been me unlearning this perspective. I am definitely not an early adopter of technology; that was probably the first trait I dropped. I am now completely skeptical of any new technologies I see. I no longer consider the positive potential outcomes; instead I ponder the profit motives that created them, and what negative impact they are likely to have on the quality of life of myself and my loved ones. I see the endless treadmill of consuming new technology; the centralization of data and control that modern technology brings us; the obsolescence of existing, functional, cheap hardware and software that we already own being forced upon us. There are fringe benefits we experience from adopting new technologies. Things like new protocols enabling higher bandwidth data transfer, greater convenience of connectivity and more; but at a significant, real cost to society. Like pollution, these externalities are not paid for by private investors or tech entrepreneurs who profit off of our technological enslavement. These are costs we bear as "the public", to the detriment of modern society and to future generations.
I quit working in May 2022 due to the growing disconnect between my personal values and what I was doing to earn a living. For the past ten years I have been employed in web development. I was initially interested in learning some new high level programming languages, and the whole server-side rendering with templates thing was new to me at the time and I enjoyed coming to understand how that worked. Very early on, however, my experience as a backend web developer started consisting heavily of integrating with third party partners via HTTP APIs. This was boring and tedious but required learning each new API and mapping that onto internal systems, so there was some interesting work there. Over time this work lost any creative merit as the basic problems of understanding an API, mapping it to internal processes and generalizing integrations to allow for adding more becomes more familiar from job to job than any new wrinkles introduces by a new API or a new internal system. That is to say, while the specifics of the work continued to change throughout my career as I went from company to company, the underlying systemic approach to doing the work stayed the same. While this stagnation began to set in, the nature of web applications changed to "Software as a Service" (SaaS). SaaS is an excellent example of how modern technology is a negative step in almost every regard. Everything is now hosted externally, you have a recurring payment obligation, changes are delivered constantly with little or no communication about the changes, and no way to avoid adopting the changes. You gain ease of adoption, but you lose control, autonomy.
Unemployment has been excellent for re-centering; for eliminating the discordance between my values and my work and allowing me to rediscover myself. It hasn't given me any answers yet, however. I don't necessarily expect it to, but I have tried to give myself as much time as possible so I can use this experience to motivate future direction. I've been away from work for a month now and I have not done any programming or technology related work whatsoever. I've rediscovered skateboarding and I have a passion for skateboarding now that's eluded me previously in life. I've continued my sim racing journey and have partaken in a manual transmission driving lesson to translate that sill to real life. Something that has made itself apparent to me during this time is how much I value physical reality. This is something I connected with from a much younger age, where I would need time to build a skate ramp or do some drawing and painting or craft work. There is something about working on a computer, writing software - something which is completely incorporeal - I think it gets to you. I think we as human beings need to interact with the physical world in a meaningful way often in order to live a happy life. I wake up every single day wondering when and where I will fit in my next skateboarding session. Do I treat myself to bowl riding today? I want to learn how to ride the coping, so I need to consider the physical aspects of the bowl and if it allows this Do I just ride for fun? How about focusing on street skating and flip tricks? What about driving time? Weather? I've been able to approach skateboarding with something resembling the care and attention that I used to apply to work, and this is a great feeling. I don't know how to manifest this in my career. I have no problem with completely upending my career into something considerably more meaningful, but I don't know what that should be.
Okay, that brings me to the next thought that came up during my most recent therapy session. There are two competing experiences I want to talk about: (1) Having a destination in mind, and (2) Not knowing the destination and taking advantage of opportunities. I think the concept of (1), having a destination, is very typical in western society. We are taught to have a plan, to have goals. As a programmer, as some one who likes to control his environment, this has always been a very easy way to view life. In practice I have experienced this in two further ways: (1.a) Successfully executing the steps required to achieve the destination, and (1.b) unsuccessfully executing the steps required. I don't know if I can really generalize my experience here, but I would say the discordance resulting from (1.b) is generally more painful and impactful than the success and peace resulting from (1.a). Now let's talk aoubt (2), having no particular destination and taking advantage of opportunities. In my own life I think this has mostly manifested in terms of friendships and relationships I've formed. It has certainly manifested in my career as well, and is how I originally got into web development. Now this is important, so pay attention: The resulting experience and feeling from achieving *anything* from doing (2) supercedes any positive experience from either (1.a) or (1.b)! At least in my experience. I find this insight to be absolutely incredible! Society teaches us from a young age to do (1), but it very quickly leads to boredom and loss of direction. How many times have you heard of someone achieving their goal and then losing passion or losing direction and becoming depressed? Whereas the serendepity that occurs from unashamedly doing the thing you love and accepting the relationships and opportunities that present themselves as a result is a transformative, enlightening experience! Even if nothing comes of it. The act of partaking in something you love and accepting whatever happens as a result is so close to mindfulness and being present. And it's really easy to get tied up in trying to make this experience become something like (1) and I think this is where all the "Do what you love" career advice articles totally fail. This is a subversion of the natural experience itself, something which should be considered as almost sacred. To try and capture it an harness it as a source of income seems like a perversion. Mind you, I haven't had to face the reality of actually earning my income yet as I'm on this journey of self-discovery, so there may be a happy medium there somewhere. I do, however, think hustle culture and the "do what you love" career advice folks are not looking out for your best interests, though; and the reality of somehow earning a living while unashamedly doing something you love is probably not really attractive reading that you can sell material for. I would guess (and hope!) that it is intensely personal and mundane.
I've been attracted to the idea of writing fiction for a living. I really like the idea of creating worlds and discovering the personalities of characters and doing all the storycrafting stuff. It seems to me like making a videogame, but with a much lower barrier to entry on the technology side, and much more accessible for anyone interested in enjoying it. Even as I write this down I am getting excited about it! But I have to content with the fact that, like technology work, I have done almost none of this during my time off. What does that mean? Is it important? I have done a *lot* of writing, it's just that the vast majority of it has been journalling and poetry, and all of it raw and unedited. I did spend one evening writing some fiction, but it was a short effort that I haven't yet followed up on. There's a good part of me that thinks it's purely a systemic thing - if I get in the routine of doing it, then it'll get done and voila! And I just haven't laid the groundwork for that routine yet. This is true. I'm also early on in my time off yet and don't want to put too much pressure into adopting certain patterns and practices, so I know this isn't really something to be worried about just yet. As far as that goes, the same reasoning applies to technology work. It may come. It may not, but it's too early at this point to make an assessment. I seem to be struggling from a real lack of attention. I did a couple of drawings and I really enjoyed that, but I found myself rushing through each time, trying to wrap it up so I could go move on to the next thing. Did I mention I'm doing Skateboarding, writing, singing, driving and sim racing? Not all of them every day, but it's a lot of "stuff" to occupy attention. I've also been strongly considering taking Croatian language lessons. Maybe this is a good indicator of what I suspect is adult ADHD, or maybe it's just trying to "maximise" my time off. I honestly have no idea or way to really gauge that. Certainly having all these different interests makes it more difficult to execute well on all of them, and naturally some fall to the side as I focus on ones that resonate more. Going back to what I wrote previously, skateboarding is the activity that continually rises to the top for me lately. Maybe it'll go nowhere or maybe it means something significant. Regardless, I will continuing pursuing it whole heartedly while I can. I think I owe it to myself to explore many of these interests and activities now while I have no other obligations so I can see what sticks and see what habits do form. If an interest goes nowhere, then I can safely drop it and focus on the rest.
Well, there you have it. This has been a glimpse into a typical pattern of thoughts that bounces around my head daily, or multiple times per day. It isn't peaceful, and that reminds me that I should really make an honest attempt at solidifying some mindfulness practice routines. But even if it isn't peaceful, I am grateful for the opportunity to do this self exploration. I feel like my career and life have been, to a large extent, on autopilot for the last decade. I haven't been living a life true to my own values, instead succumbing to the pressures of those around me. I haven't even touched on how this affects my relationship with Daniela, and I assure you that there is significant tension there that we are working through. I mean, all of this "stuff" (waves hands around vaguely) affects all of my relationships, of course. I'm very curious how this summer will go now that the kids are out of school. How will we spend our time together? How will our communication with each other change? All very interesting stuff, and again, I'm grateful to be in the position where I can do this discovery and take this time.
Thank you for reading and see you next time.
Published on June 30, 2022