The Journey Back: re-Writing, re-Coding, re-Writing about re-Coding.
It has taken about the same amount of sheer willpower to start writing again as it took to start coding again. I’m guessing this is because I’ve found something I believe to be worth sharing, so I’m writing with direction and purpose.Of course naturally I’m also too exhausted and unmotivated to invest my time and attention in much else.
The good news for you, reading this, is that since all my attention and focus will now be invested in the two things mentioned above, you get to experience a double journey with me. I’ll be sharing my challenges, solutions, reflections and thought processes as I traverse this new web of development as a Javascript programmer.
I’ll do my best to keep this babble short and sweet. Subsequent posts will be shorter, I promise.
It occurred to me that I probably needed some form of external motivation-apart from an unwillingness to die of hunger and poverty-to keep up with coding again so here we are. Not to mention I’m still trying to understand how I convinced myself to stop in the first place. I absolutely love it!
Okay maybe not “absolutely”, but a lot. A very large lot.
Hence I’m sharing this journey for 5 reasons:
- I hope someone out there reads it and finds the motivation they need to begin as well.
- Public accountability as an extra motivation. If I force myself to have to share a journey, then I have to travel, and travelling means doing the work so I’m not at the same point next week as I am this week.
- A close friend convinced me to. Damn you Henry!
- Document my journey. Keep tabs so I can look back at anytime and measure how far I’ve come from where I started.
- I needed to get writing again and what better way than to pick something relatively new that I enjoy.
Since I started learning to code again I came to the realization that web development is a rather painstaking yet emotionally unrewarding endeavour.
The “satisfaction” I get from solving code problems is very fleeting. A problem can take me hours to understand and fix, but immediately it’s done, the “satisfaction”is so momentary that sometimes it’s almost as if I felt nothing and I just go seeking the next problem to solve. It’s like a high of sorts, one shot of it and suddenly I’m in need of my next fix. It leaves me feeling bland.
I’m not particularly bothered by whether it’s a good or bad thing, infact I consider it a good thing because it’ll keep me curious and learning. It’s just my personal observation.
Too often I’ve had to find out the fulfillment I seek is not at the end of this problem, or the next.
Rather it’s at the beginning.
Almost like the purpose of code is not to find solutions as I think, but to find problems.
And I don’t even know how that makes any sense but it does to me. I thoroughly enjoy it no doubt. It’s just a weird emotional vacuum to be left with after doing something so engaging and draining.
I guess the emotional reward for this labour has to come from the financial benefits and client’s joy, because the work itself just leaves you wanting more suffering.
An addictive Stockholm syndrome.
I could be wrong though, seeing as I’m still a novice in this environment.
Let’s wait and see. This is our journey now.
