Hi, this one isn’t going to be a terribly fun read for you(if I’m being honest). No, rather this post is for me. You’ll learn a bit about me from it but it won’t be nearly as valuable for you as it is a documentation of where I’m at in life for me. It’s like a letter to my future self to come back and laugh at for how melodramatic I’m being. That’s just how some of the journal/other posts are gonna go.
I still have a job in software development and I spend a lot of time being a pretty miserable person. It’s not like I’m living horribly, I’m just not living how I want to. I have no passion for what I do and I find that fact crushing. Growing up in the United States I was taught that I would be happy doing what I loved and that I should make lots of money doing it but also that money doesn’t bring happiness and that pursuing what you love comes with costs (usually monetary, contradictorily enough). Being the pragmatist that I am, I studied computers because “hey these things are cool and I hear there are jobs in this field.” It was quite the “enlightened” approach to deciding how to spend the rest of my life.
Sparing you the gritty details of my life, I think it’s time for a change. That change is coming in the form of pursuing meaning a little more in my life. It’s hard to get moving on that but I know that I have to so that’s helping to light a fire beneath me. People say that when planning your future you should think about where you see yourself in 5 years, to the point that it’s a cliche. That’s not really helpful for me, I find it much harder to look that close in the future as opposed to at the end of my life. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the crushing existential dread I’ve felt since I was 6 or the fact that a lot of the most impactful lessons in my life I’ve learned from people significantly older than me.
So, in the short span of 60 years when I’m 84, what do I want to regret? Would I rather regret having never really pursued writing and worked harder at my job or being worse at my job but pursuing my hobbies? Sure, there’s no guarantee I’ll be worse but it is something to consider. Would I rather regret going back to school and switching to a new profession, accruing debt I don’t need in exchange for lower pay in a field I’m interested in, or working hard at a job I don’t care about to take the easier better-paid path that doesn’t produce the same joys for me?
Life isn’t binary, it’s closer to Hex. Just because I can boil these things down to a 1 or 0 choice doesn’t mean that those are my only options, but to find those other options I need to start making choices to begin with. In conclusion, there’s no conclusion. I’m alive and relatively well and finally making an effort. Update this blog at least once a month. Go back school. Take a walk. Don’t let me down <3