22 Jun 2017
Why Not Both?
In my last post, I said the following:
The dream is to [make a living] with words, through writing or speaking or teaching.
However, my resume and experience indicate a person with Development and DevOps skills.
The truth of the matter is that writing is a valuable skill to have in life generally. There’s no reason that one cannot be and do both.
Here are just some of the things that a developer can write:
- Technical Blog Posts
- Failure Post-Mortems
- Success Post-Mortems
- Tips and Tricks
- Tutorials
- Patch Notes
- Documentation
- Tech Talks
- Reviews
- Conference Overview
- Software Review
This doesn’t even cover personal writing, like a book or game review, or a general opinion piece.
Like most of my writing, this is as much a message to myself as it is to anyone reading it:
Take some time every day to express yourself with words. It’s easier and more valuable than you think.
21 Jun 2017
It’s been almost seven weeks since I’ve worked for pay.
I haven’t been out of work for this long at any point in my employment history. The experience been alternately freeing and frustrating, in a number of different ways.
Freeing in that:
- I don’t have to worry about company or interpersonal politics.
- I don’t have to work on uninspiring projects.
- I don’t have to work with uninspiring people.
- If I want to take a break in the middle of the day for a couple hours, I can.
- I can wear pajamas all day.
- I don’t have to really worry about a team lead or manager breathing down my neck.
- I can wake up naturally.
- I get to set my own schedule.
Frustrating in that:
- I get to set my own schedule, which consumes a lot of energy.
- No one is expecting anything of me. All of the standards I have are self-imposed.
- I am not generating income.
- I have to rely on the state unemployment system.
- Every expenditure must be scrutinized more closely than ever.
- Being social is difficult as finding free things to do is not always easy.
- Dating is difficult for a number of reasons, not the least of which is having money to go on dates.
- A lot of uncertainty is added to every day.
- A lot of work is involved in trying to find work.
The Slump
Over the last week or so, a kind of ennui has set in. It began on Saturday after having breakfast with D. I journaled for a while, and then sat down and played video games for the rest of the day. Repeat for Sunday, except with some cooking and socializing with parents. By Monday morning, during which I had a minor financial crisis, I had reached peak Can’t Even.
The few responses I’ve gotten in terms of work have been uninspiring and disheartening. This among other things has led to a reclusive and depressing headspace.
I’m also still struggling with how exactly I wish to earn a living. The dream is to do so with words, through writing or speaking or teaching. However, my resume and experience indicate a person with Development and DevOps skills. This kind of work is far more in demand, generally pays better and has more stability.
Help is Within Reach
On Tuesday, I reached out to my support network. They helped me expand on some ideas and provided some valuable advice regarding my malaise. Advice that I had read and heard before, but as Samuel Johnson said,
“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
They reminded me of simple but not easy things like:
- Set a few small, achievable daily goals.
- Write a rough schedule for your day.
- Get some exercise.
- Remember to eat.
Overcoming the Slump
My current strategy is to pursue DevOps/Developer work while continuing to write every day. Doing work and gaining experience in this field will provide a lot of grist for the personal writing mill, not to mention a lot of opportunities to write in other capacities. Technical manuals and documentation don’t write themselves.
Going forward in this space you’ll see progress on this front. Writing about:
- Falling back in love with code
- Provisioning a Development Environment with Ansible
- Minimal, simple websites with HTML5
- Writing JavaScript with Kotlin
- Creating and linking databases with SQLite
- Lessons learned from books and video games
I hope that you’ll come along with me.
16 Jun 2017
I just finished reading Chapter 4 of Jeff Goins’s book Real Artists Don’t Starve. It begins with a quote from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com:
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”
Goins starts the meat of the chapter with the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who persevered through hundreds of denials and rejections on the way to publishing his first novel.
Partially because of this perseverance, Fitzgerald grew into an incredible success, only to become results-oriented and focus too strongly on the critical and business reception of his work.
This led to discouragement and giving up.</br>
Fitzgerald died at 44 of heart failure, mostly penniless.
Goins goes on in the chapter to define when exactly an artist should be stubborn and when they should not. The concept of grit is discussed at length.
I can empathize with discouragement and giving up. This kind of grit, pushing through adversity and failure for a longer-term view of success, was never something that I had to have.
My mom read to my brother and I from a very, very young age. The ability to take in and internalize new information grew from this learning. School was always easy, and when it got hard, I gave up.
In high school, I had a C in AP Chemistry. Partially to avoid difficulty and partially in an effort to graduate early, I dropped AP Chem at winter break and took on a much easier courseload.
This pattern of giving up when it gets hard has repeated itself several times throughout my adult life. I have been unemployed for over a month, and have taken on only a couple of new challenges. I have lost inertia. I wouldn’t quite say that I’m depressed, but I have definitely felt rudderless.
I feel stuck between a few different paths:
- Continue to learn programming and web development, finding an entry-level job at a software company.
- Pursue the artistic and creative dream of writing for a living.
- Brush back up on DevOps-y things like Ansible and Puppet and find work in more of an IT capacity.
I experienced the giving up pattern just recently. I was working on a website for the MtG league I run here in Wichita. After being away from the project a couple of days, I jumped back in and quickly felt incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of work that needed to be done. I gave up and dicked around for the rest of the day.
Even as I typed that last paragraph, I was thinking of solutions or strategies that I’ve heard or read or attempted to implement myself in order to solve those problems.
Grit, from my perspective, is a simple thing. Not easy, but simple.
It’s no more complex or noble than that.
Give some thought to this.</br>
If you’re experiencing doubt or want to give up, don’t give up just yet. </br>
Consider another way forward.</br>
Take the problem you’re facing down,</br>
break it into smaller pieces.
How small?
This small.</br>
Two words.</br>
Maybe three words.</br>
Four if you must.</br>
Get specific.
Nearly every problem we face </br>
can be addressed with</br>
the right mindset.</br>
The right outlook.
The cliche goes</br>
“The only person holding me back is me.”</br>
This is both true and not true.
You are holding yourself back.</br>
But it’s not all of you.</br>
It’s the parts of you that are afraid.</br>
That are doubtful.</br>
That are hateful.</br>
Voices that you’ve heard and remembered.</br>
Voices that sound a lot like yours.</br>
Listen to them.</br>
Acknowledge their existence.</br>
Then move on with your life.</br>
Meditation helps.</br>
Silence helps.
Return to the bullets above.</br>
Show up.</br>
Have a plan.</br>
Don’t fuck around.</br>
Do the work.
It’s simple. Not easy.</br>
No one said this would be easy.
Back to the books for me.
Until next time.