Same Boulder, New Me
A retrospective on big tech, new beginnings, and learning
The Subtle Art of Dysfunction
Being a dysfunctional asshole is quite thrilling. You never know what direction life will take you. Take me, right now. Sitting in my newly renovated study, having recently “quit” my day job as a software engineer in Big Tech (I think I’m legally obligated to categorize it this way).
I know what you’re thinking. It’s super pretentious to call it The Study. Jokes on you, I have an office upstairs. But that room is so run over with music gear, instruments, and a couple of computer setups that I needed a sane place to read and write. And when you already have an office, well, it’s only logical to call this new room The Study. So really, you’re the asshole.
Something that’s surprised me since being unemployed is that my energy levels, the extraordinarily low ones I blamed on burnout from my career, haven’t suddenly surged. It’s almost as if this giant weight pushing me down for the past 4 years wasn’t just the day job. I guess I have some shit I need to solve. Fuck yeah.
As an aside, I went the ER recently for a busted ankle. The nurse taking my information at the front desk asked me “What’s your occupation?” I had to answer “Unemployed” for the first time in my life. I’ve been working since I was 19, and essentially full time since I was 20. I’m now 31. 11 years of working full time, and I think the longest I didn’t have a job in that time was maybe 4 days. Here I am after over 2 months of being unemployed, and the energy levels still haven’t returned.
It’s not you, it’s me
I got the first big hint that it was me, not the job, when I took a full month of PTO and did basically nothing. Before the PTO of course I had plans. Lots of plans, actually. I had an entire reading list planned out. A couple of new skills I was going to learn in the kitchen. A short watch list of documentaries and lectures I had been meaning to get to. I was going to enter a Game Jam and build a little game. The vacation wasn’t your typical outing to Hawaii, it was just a way to recover…whatever it was I had lost. Of course the PTO came and went and I did absolutely nothing. I mostly re-read old fiction series that I’ve already read through multiple times. I didn’t even have the mental energy to play videogames while I was off work for a literal month.
I was dreading going back to work. I had been miserable there for quite some time. Luckily it didn’t really matter, I was only back for a week when I got the news that I had made the decision to resign. Lol. Of course there’s more to the story than that. There was a whole cascading shit mountain of dysfunction that had led to this moment. In my defense, this particular mountain of fecal debris was two sided. But certainly I had taken quite a few of the bathroom breaks that helped build it.
You probably have no idea what I’m saying, and maybe that’s for the best. I barely know what I’m saying. Besides, I don’t know what I actually am and am not allowed to say about this particular incident. On one hand they encourage employees to discuss their “lived experience”. On the other hand they make sure to remind you that you can’t discuss anything that’s under NDA or considered a “trade secret”, which of course they make essentially no effort to clearly define. That said, there is paperwork that I guess describes all of this somewhere, and at some point I plan to try and figure it all out and give a full, honest accounting of what it’s like to work in big tech from the perspective of a relatively normal dysfunctional person.
Making Sisyphus Proud
One thing I do know for sure is this: Sisyphus would be my biggest fan. I am the fucking K I N G of going in circles, rediscovering the same old shit time and time again, always running on the infinite treadmill of self-improvement, surprised I’m getting nowhere. I often rediscover my old writing and find something that actually inspires or teaches me something. How fucking bizarre is that? Myself, from the past, being a mentor? At best it’s disconcerting, but at worst it implies that I’m somehow atrophying over time.
I certainly need to figure that out. And I plan to. I just went to a doctor and lined up a full psych eval. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, and I haven’t been medicated in the last half of my life. In a way it’s actually surprising that I’ve been as successful as I have. Sometimes it feels like things have just been more difficult in recent years, but when I look back on things I realize that I’ve been completely dysfunctional my entire life. When I hit flow state, I’m an absolute beast. The problem is getting there. Luckily I have no problem when it comes to music (mostly guitar), but that doesn’t really help me with my career.
Take a Walk With Me
In the meantime, I’ve decided to go on a journey. This journey is one of self-discovery, learning, and introspection. To some degree I would like to uncover my true self, chipping away at the sedimentary rock that has formed a shell around me throughout decades of living in a society.
I’ve always been something of a polymath, heavily interested in many different domains. I enjoy learning, just for the sake of it. More than that, learning empowers me. It gives me energy. Applying hard won knowledge to a problem really gets my juices flowing, so to speak.
So what do I want, and why am I here? And why should you care?
Well, what I want is to find a sense of equilibrium, stability, and happiness. Luckily I have a wonderful wife, a tween daughter who I love despite her raging hormones, many great friends, and a close knit (albeit, small) family. So on the day to day all the pieces are there.
What I’ve realized is that I need to learn. It’s almost a physical necessity. When I’m learning, I’m thriving. The problem is, I tend to hyperfocus in my life. If I’m hyperfocused on work, work is going great, to the detriment of all else. So, naturally, if some other part of my life is blossoming, then work is nice and fucked. So I really have to figure that out.
Right now I just want to learn and write. I have the luxury of taking some time off to myself and figuring out what I want to do next. I’ve been reading every day, writing most days, and I’m doing quite well. I’ve realized that writing is actually an extremely powerful part of how I process ideas and information. I have trouble forming good habits that last, but if I can crack the code of writing consistently (and then reading my own writing) I think it will be good for me.
So I guess that’s really the goal. Learn some stuff consistently. Write about it. And post. Recently I’ve been super hype on philosophy (especially stoicism), computer science, and quantum mechanics. I’ve been watching/reading/listening to everything I can get my hands on, and I don’t plan on stopping. I’ve talked about it all so much to my friends and family that they are all exhausted. Of course, some of the information strikes a chord with someone when I’m talking to them about it. The physics and science in particular tends to get people excited. The problem is that their appetite for new information doesn’t match my own. So here I am, to write and hope someone out there is interested enough to read what I have to say.
The Real Me
I can’t promise that what I write will always be worthwhile. I don’t even want to promise that. It’s too much pressure. Society, especially social media, create this constant illusion that we are supposed to be perfect. Working at a fortune 100 company in a highly competitive field doesn’t help. Everyone is putting their best foot/face forward, and it can be easy to feel like a impostor or a failure on a daily basis. I have no interest in perpetuating that illusion. So let me tell you the truth about myself.
I’m a morbidly obese white cis-gendered male with some sort of mental disorder (or set of co-morbid things!). I seriously can’t get my shit together. Many of my friends and family would likely tell you that I’m the smartest, most successful person they know. And they might be right. But it certainly doesn’t feel that way. I’m a monkey, grasping at straws.
I’m also a badass. I’m a better musician than basically anyone I’ve ever met in real life (it helps to not have met very many people due to being a complete hermit, but I’ll hold this W for now). I’m a successful software engineer who, despite some hiccups, has consistently been a top performer in most settings. And I am rather intelligent. Even if my IQ is average, my work ethic and ability to quickly digest large swathes of information has proven extremely useful. So I feel simultaneously capable of basically anything when it comes to software, coding, math, science, etc. And yet so flustered that in the macro I tend to flounder.
I think most people have the problem of not trying to accomplish enough in their lives. I might have the opposite problem. It’s attempting to do a hundred different things that has rendered me stationary, moving in many different directions that all cancel out. Right now all I want is a community of people to talk about big ideas with. A community that can keep pace with me, keep me feeling accountable, and even push me along in my journey. I hope I can find it this time, because I’m getting pretty tired of searching.
If you like math, science, computer science, programming, philosophy, art, music, or fucking dragons. Maybe give me a follow. I should maybe clarify that by fucking dragons I mean like fantasy novels, not literal sex with dragons. I’m sure there’s a substack about that somewhere, but this ain’t it.