Growing up

This is a self reflect article. It’s more about me needing to write stuff down rather than sharing anything specifically.

Life has been happening, fortunately. There’s a saying that says “You should wish that God does not bring upon you what you can actually endure”.

Leading up to today

Last year work has been kind of underwhealming. I was a person that was super excited about creating stuff in my working hours. When I had dead time I was always fiddling with an extra project, reading a book about programming/business. I always had something I wanted to learn more about.

In the summer of 2023 I recall that I needed to get invloved with more creating things in my life. There was a point in which I felt that programming was not expressive enough for me. Especially dipping my toes in functional programming and Haskell, I thought that many of the ideas that I was once considering tough, were suddenly much much easier and intuitive. Might sound arrogant, but I felt that programming was solved for me, at least to the extend that I care. The only checkbox that I did not go through was finishing SICP.

I spent time studying game design. Game Design is not another programming language. It’s a craft which has many many chidlren, within each someone could spend multiple lifetimes. I dipped my toes into that as well. It’s amazing to just sit down and consider how someone can create digital experiences that are intended for generating feelings out of the user/player in this case. I started to connect with ideas like User Experience and Design on a deeper level. I felt like I started to understand what design is, rather than thinking that it’s just “colors” or “digital interfaces” like my programmer mind was saying many many years.

I started finding resemblance in Architecture, Painting, Sculpting, 3D Art, User Experience, Music, Improvising and many many areas I hadn’t spent too much time thinking about.

What came after that is an innate feeling that I want to work on the entertainment industry. I feel that devoting your time so that you enrich your emotional worlds and maybe a few others’ is something that I want to do.

The reason I abandonded game design is because I did too much coding at that time. It felt like I was programming something that was not fun, to be honest. It wasn’t something challenging, it was trivial. And, yet again, I had to discover the nuts and bolts of another tool in order to create a program. Maybe that’s another sign of burnout. I’ve had plenty of those.

Regarding my daily work, I’m at a place in which I have available time, because there’s no process that can make use of my time efficiently. It’s typical that I finish my work early and there’s nothing else to do because in order to do anything there are like 3-4 levels of people you have to go through. While this give me space to do other things, like the ones mentioned above, it also cultivates a sense of insecurity. I’ve always been the person to study in order to be ahead of the curve, in what I do. Now I feel like I’m leveraging this heads up distance, but since I’ve let myself the last 2 years I feel the distance closing in, while I notice that the market is in decline. This stressed me out. I cannot afford to lose my job at any given moment.

Life happens

Cancer hit our door this year. We are still going through it. It’s been something that most families face at some point. I, myself, am a person that when stress peaks I usually express it through illnes anxiety or fear of dying. I’ve been battling those and have gotten better, but there times which is still tough. I feel that sometimes I do not face my thoughts and worries as I should, thus they pile up and given a stressfull situation, my reactions explode out of proportion. I feel that ignoring my marginal unsatisfaction about my work for the last 2 years is a big stress factor. I also feel like that my mind is wired towards taking action on preventing the worst and setting up for good things to happen, therefore living in stress for what’s about to happen, rather than living in the moment. This is also something I have worked on with therapy but I still struggle with, especially in high stress situations like this one.

I often have derealization feeling. I feel that I am not myself. That reality is fake. I feel that something terrible is about to happen. I feel detached from myself, as you’re seeing yourself in 3rd person. I feel that what my eyes see are not there.

These feelings usually disolve after a good cry or letting the volume out in any way. I’m lucky enough to have great people around me.

I still have trouble sleeping though. I’ve been waking up feeling like my heart is going to explode.

The more I write about those things, the more it feels like I have to start therapy again.

What now?

I think that my mind generally works fine. I don’t think that my worries and fears about my job and my role in it on the years to come are irrational. I feel that I have to find a way to feel like I’m contributing again, in a pace that satisfies me. It’s ok to take a break and not always chase what’s next. Enjoy the moment. Learn to appreciate what’s in front of you. I generally feel that my life is going great, it’s just that my mind races forward and tends to deal with stuff that they are not present and might not ever be.

Practically speaking, it’s really tough to find a work environment in which I feel like I am contributing to an extend that makes sense to me, while still being able to do things outside of work. Just by typing this, I realise how polarized my thinking is. I either think about work all the time or I think nothing of it. The truth about that is that 8 hours are too much for work, for me, regardless of what I do. And I know many people feel like that. I really think that, we need to address this, collectively.

The thing is that I think about work all the time when it excites me. It’s not that I feel I need to do this. I had fun doing this. The fine like is what is transactional about that, and what is actually fun. This is something I also need to think about.

What I feel I need lately is to hang out with people and play music. It’s something I haven’t done in years, and it’s a part of me that I’ve really missed. I don’t know if I’ll continue to work in tech, moving forward. I’m just trying to process things at the moment and not panic. Sounds like I need time.