One month ago, I was working at Scientific Games servicing lottery machines. It involved traveling to the 2500-odd locations in Iowa where you could get a Powerball. Daytime hours, revolving workweek, Steady Eddie.
Today, I’m waiting for marching orders at my new job as a data center technician for a company that services Microsoft. It’s a 3-4 night/week shift, so I’m still sorting out the sleep cycle for it.
It’s been a complicated season. No matter how much you’ve been through, a year or two of relative ease and stability will make you rusty.
I read a book recently. I don’t recommend you read it unless you’re in tech. Something that affects one person likely won’t affect others in the same way. We each have our own path to carve.
The book was about Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux: Just for Fun – The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. Near the end, he brought up an idea that’s been rattling in my mind: (sic) “The greatest form of human achievement is in having fun. Everything moves from survival, through to sustainability, to fun. It’s how we consider life forms to be ‘higher’ or not: whether they’re capable of playing. Ants don’t play, but dolphins do.”
Now, I’m a rather intense person, if you’ve ever had the varying fortune to have met me. Most of it was because I was using survival-based reasoning to do non-survival things (made a book re: autism that revolves around the concept).
To throw that away and have fun sounds too good to be true. But, it not only resonates in my animal essence (I mean, how many people are mentally well and like self-discipline?) it also reflects in my spiritual beliefs (it’s only religiosity if it’s merely the motions, after all).
Thus, I’m now reconfiguring my approach to life. I’m now doing things that I find fun. Thankfully, TechSplained and my Github toolbox are fun to me, so that’s what I’m working on these days.