As I mentioned on a previous post, I had not written a line of code in 23 years, and now I am in the eye of an Elixir hurricane.
Emotions abound. I feel a giddy excitement everytime my brain starts to grasp something fully, that light at the end of the mental tunnel of knowing one is about to get it. Progress can be addictive. It seems we are hard-wired to figure things out, master things. We get rewarded from inside.
Other feelings are not as friendly, and I have made it a zen-lixir practice to notice them but not be informed by them. Those would be frustration, self-doubt, boredom, and laziness.
I am parenting my inner rebel to just sit, study, and go through the entire marathon, both intellectual as well as emotional, and come to my conclusions once I have a good grasp of the languange and the industry.
Other good emotions are the promises of the future. As someone with a bit of a creative, entrepreneurial, and adventurous mind, the thought of becoming nailed to a chair and spend a good portion of the gift of life interacting with a screen makes my stomach cringe. Simultaneously, there are many things in life that are not easily accessible unless they are supported by a firm foundation in the form of a job and/or career.
Some of those things are also adventures, creations, opportunities, expansions which tickle the soul and dreams. Many things in life are possible when you become really good at something, contribute abundantly, and get fairly compensated for it.
For me, some of those are taking my musical production to the next level, building a decent studio on the way. Moving to a less urban environment and be closer to nature, hopefully the ocean. Take care of my parents as they grow old. Travel to see my friends (who have a habit of settling far, far away)... There are things I would love to study, projects I would love to build. I leave the door open to finding a woman crazy and brave enough to create a dinasty with me, old-fashion style. I will need a small bus as well as a reasonable-size abode for that little army.
Those dreams fuel my motivation to becoming an asset to this industry, and serve as pacifiers whenever the inner rebel struggles with understanding maps, structs, and other (still) difficult concepts.
How about you? What do you dream about as you code? How did you end up here? What juices you about all the hours you spend on the screen? What is that you like the most about this industry and makes you feel alive? What is that frustrates you or wish was not part of the deal?
git add .
git committ -m "there is a dream behind every line of code"
BigSpaces
Top comments (3)
Beautiful as always.
If it helps, I also struggle with these same concerns regularly (self doubt AKA Imposter syndrome, boredom, laziness, being chained to by chair).
For me teaching has been a dream come true. I love being surrounded by a community of incredibly supportive developers. I love watching other people grow. I live for the moments when I see someone have that same "AHA" moment that as you progress through your career becomes less frequent.
With regards to being tied to the chair, some of the happiest times of my life were spent in parks coding in Montreal basking in the sun feeling grass on my toes. Coding doesn't have to be tied to a chair or only done in the dark. I anticipate a great number of innovations in the field over the years as Wi-Fi becomes more accessible and less location dependent. Even now, there are many creative solutions to avoid the "chains on my chair" feeling that I suspect is fairly common in the industry.
Best of luck with your journey, and know that I'm grateful to walk beside and behind you.
Ah yes! It is comforting to know that others also work through the same or similar struggles.
It is a new world indeed, where we can code in parks and in places near the beach. Those opportunites were not there when I started in the tech world. Also, many tech opportunities are overlapping with the creative and the human aspect of life. Much of that was simply not there 20 years ago.
As you say, it is time to get creative, and it is going to be really fun and rewarding to keep walking this path side by side. I am indeed very grateful. You are a great teacher.
We continue!
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.