Changes

May 22, 2023

I’m changing a lot of things in my life.

It’s too much to explain every item and reason—it takes me ages even when talking to someone who knows the details of my daily life—but suffice it to say, I’m taking steps of my own volition, and it feels really good.

Scary. But, mostly good.

The short summary is that I’ve recognized that working in tech is really hard on my mental state. My motivations and aspirations that got me to where I am in software engineering are no longer the driving factors in my life. Things always change, even if it takes us a while to realize what’s happening. Some of what’s changed for me is the satisfaction I feel when tackling the kind of big, convoluted problem that I face in software. While taking note of these differences in myself, I became aware that I already have a big, lifelong dream of a goal that I am excited about.

For several years, it felt Too Hard. But it doesn’t anymore. I decided to face the elephant in the room of my brain and come up with a task list to get it relocated to a proper home. The elephant is my first novel, and the tasks included many hours of ripping it to shreds to let it rise from the ashes as something new and wonderful. (Please forgive this strange mixed metaphor. I do not condone the shredding of elephants.)

I’ve always written for fun and personal satisfaction (plus a bit of escapism, naturally). It comes easily to me to write characters in some situation or another, and I’ve often worked through some of my own thought processes by putting them on a page. Although I always wrote a lot of content that I never intended to share—working with my demons isn’t always going to make for a compelling plot—I did write a lot of things that I wanted to put out there.

But it felt Too Hard. And it doesn’t anymore. What I’ve created deserves to be shared, and I’m going to make it happen.