No more caffeine, no more enhancers, no more false motivation.
I have been developing software a little under 6 years and its been a journey of nothing but discovery, every single step of the way.
Starting off as an aspiring game developer, I gradually shifted interest into the more practical and more promising entreprise application development.
Over the course of my software development career, I have dreamed, I have toiled and I have quit more times than it is humanly possible without falling into acute depression. Needless to say, I am yet to strike my rock and the toil is still sheathed with dreams of a promise, driven by dying ambition.
However, I still find myself clawing through the mirky waters of languages, frameworks, servers, terminologies, certifications … URGH! Trying to siphon little ounces of whatever promise lies in the barreness of technology.
In my ventures, I have however decided to be a man about my career suffering and face my fears head on.
I have decided to stop taking caffeine, whether packeted as a lie in an over-zealous can of some-energy-drink or hidden as false intelligence inside a pack of coffee that looks like it listens to encanto in its free time.
It hasnt all been in vain though; hard work, resilience and the desire to always obtain knowledge has seen me gain a semi-reputable standard amongst peers and a number of the “entrepreneurs” I interact with.
Currently I hold a comfortable position as a senior developer and the system we work on is changing lives and improving the livelihoods of one-a-many people. Blurghhh!
It sucks though, for sure! I thought by now I will have made this game changing application that would revolutionalise the way we interact as human beings.
I thought my name will be in the ending credits of this fantasy game we call life, etched so deep in the stones of history. I thought my name would be heralded with some of the giants in terms of software; names like Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak and Guido Van Rossum.
On the contrary though, my name hardly produces an echo when my boss is bellowing timelines in my phone’s earpiece, miles away — at a vacation spot- as he uses the trails of sweat on his head to determine the country he will visit next.
It sucks for sure, its a realisation every entrepreneur has made and done something about but Im just not an entrepreneur, Im a creator. Im Trovalds, Steve, Guido. Im not Jobs.
I take coffee to stay awake and code. I doot make phone calls and come up with a number of documents outlining lies and processes that will convert said lies into money. I watched motivational videos and read “I Woz” by Steve Wozniak, (I encourage every aspiring engineer to read this book), not because I wanted to change the world and/or conquer it, it was because I wanted to make it happier, cooler, more hip, more fab. Hmphhh! Damnit!
I’ve just realised Im doing it wrong. I sought inspiration in the wrong places, I was drinking coffee for the wrong reasons and I was clearly interacting with wrong shrinks.
Starting today I have decided to make a sober, concious and difficult decision to stop taking coffee so that I make the best of the hours I am actively awake and sleep when I am too tired to perform.
I have opted for gym work outs instead of shrink visits, limiting the number of psychological/mental tuning I get to videos by Jordan Peterson only, someone I believe holds the current title of the most reknown intellectual in modern society, given that Hawkins is no more (God rest Hawkins’ soul).
This way I believe my mind will narrow down and then I will figure everything out from there.
I know not if this will work or even what my goal in all of this is. But all I know is that coffee drinking, inspiration video watching and beating your body silly in order to write ten more lines of code doesnt earn you a spot among the greats. It just doesnt.
