16
what now?
2025, dec 23
i just signed off in my work chat for probably the last time. this company has taken good care of me for the last 8 years. and i’ve been able to contribute good work, in kind. it was a good job, at a company led by people who really do believe it all goes better when workers have their needs met, and are treated well.
i could have stayed.
a year in, i was convinced i’d be at this company until i was dead. if they’d have me that long.
and then death came, but not how i’d imagined.
i never expected i’d get to build software systems part-time, for and alongside such kind and cool folks, and that i’d live so comfortably doing so. and then!—i think it was earlier this year—i realized i wouldn’t be content to spend the rest of this mortal vessel’s life like that. imagine my surprise. (and dismay! and self-loathing! this job is so good! i really like and admire my colleagues!) i imagined myself looking back on a life doing what i’ve been doing for the last 8 years. imagined that future self looking back, and having pangs of regret.
thus did whatever self that had software career aspirations finally die.
i’m not sure that they were ever really alive.
in a lot of ways, i just sort of fell into building software. lots of factors tipped me toward it: both parents working in information technology; early exposure and fluency with computers; nerd-ass friends (luv u, todd) who got into programming soooo early, and who i admired for it.
i think i was a sophomore in high school when my parents let me borrow their big-ass sony digital camera.
digital cameras weren’t nearly so ubiquitous as they are now. i got really into photography. started carrying that sony with me everywhere. i was taking pictures of everything that caught my interest. and while i was carrying that camera around, almost anything could catch my interest.
and then i wanted to share those pictures. this was around 2004 or 2005, so i couldn’t just dump my pics onto facebook. (i think that became possible within the next year or two, but the uploading process sucked, especially given the volume of my photography). my dad suggested learning SQL. todd was using PHP for his website, and i thought todd and his website were cool. so i learned PHP, and SQL, and then made myself a weird lil photoblog.1 i made it so i could upload an ass-ton of photos at once, and caption them almost like i was filling out a spreadsheet. the website would then let visitors flip through the photos in chronological order, showing my captions alongside each photo. i hosted this site from our home computer. i didn’t have a domain name at first, so my friends would find my website through a link in my AIM profile. it was just the IP address of our house.2 (later this site would live at ricecarbs.net)
then i went to college. of the few things that made sense and had any appeal to me, college seemed the most pragmatic choice. and the least risky (i was also considering the military).
in my first semester, i declared my major in comp sci, because i didn’t really want to do anything else. or if i did, i was scared i couldn’t cut it.
that would change later. about halfway through college, i took a photography class on a whim; it didn’t count toward any of my graduation requirements, but i’d get to mess around in a darkroom, and i really wanted to try that. at the end of the course, our professor, lynn cazabon, was really supportive, and enthusiastic about my work. she encouraged me to apply to UMBC’s art program. i got in the next semester, and declared a second major: art, with a focus on photography. and after just 3 semesters, i dropped it, so i could graduate sort of on time.
a part of me wishes i hadn’t.
if i hadn’t taken so many credits that didn’t count toward my graduation requirements; if i had continued with the spanish i’d begun in high school, instead of starting over with japanese to satisfy my language requirement; if i hadn’t completed most of a second degree—i could have graduated on time easily. but those courses were my favorites. everything i remember with fondness from my time in college came of whimsy. i look back on my moments of pragmatism with a cool appreciation, at best.
after college, while interviewing for programming jobs, i’d tell interviewers the story about my photoblog. it seemed to impress most of them. got a few offers for corporate positions, and picked one. left it after the 6 month contract-to-hire term was up, for a less-corporate software job.
and then ended up leaving that one after a few3 years. at the end of my time there, i’d been quietly freaking out, and couldn’t figure out why. i’d suspected at least part of it was burnout; consulting can be a big bummer. they granted me a sabbatical, and i journaled obsessively for 3 months. decided i was right about the burnout, and decided i didn’t want to make a full-time habit of consulting.
then started at this not-at-all-corporate software job. those last two jobs i got following bestie christopher: both times he’d landed a job at the company first, and then he recommended me. he’s a badass, so they listened. and that got me the chance to prove that i am also capable. (thx christopher. gonna miss working with you.)
anyway, that all leads here:
me leaving a dream job with my friends in a dream career.
my dreams? i don’t think they ever were. but dang, it’s been good.
while this outcome was a lot of work, it was also just another stop along a path of least resistance.4 i’ve been making (or not making) big decisions to minimize risk and uncertainty. even if it’s not always exactly easy, i think of behaving that way as going with the flow. a surrender to the ways of a society that is, in a lot of ways, very ill. (one being its tendency to punish nonconformity.)
it’s finally clear to me that i’ve avoided what i was afraid of. i have so much safety in my life. if i don’t do something with that—if i just keep doing this and accumulating more of the same—i think i will have squandered this life. i still wonder whether i’m, to use my therapist’s words, “turning my nose up” at something good by leaving. or is this pushing myself forward, further, and doing honor to everything that got me this far? i guess it depends on how much further i can push.
i’m really sad to be leaving, that i won’t be working with my friends at Figure 53. but i’m excited to be giving myself the chance to meet new people to admire and learn from. i’m excited to have the space to find new kinds of work.
i want to see what happens if i let myself try something when i’m not so sure i can cut it. i want to see what happens if i let myself follow my whimsy, again.
and over the next 6 years i’d repeat this exercise at least 4 more times with different programming languages and frameworks. because i enjoyed trying to improve on previous designs, and because these kinds of technologies were the kind of thing that captivated me, then. (iterative design continues to fascinate me. new programming thingies, not so much.)
and our house’s IP address was surprisingly stable. ISPs charge extra for an IP that’s guaranteed not to change. we weren’t paying for that, but my website’s IP address changed only a few times in the years i hosted a website from home.
ohh, about six
i have only a very casual understanding of theoretical models of the universe, but i have this suspicion that a totally mechanistic model would say all outcomes (and choices, or rather, the illusion thereof) lie along the One Path of least resistance, a universal trend toward flatness.
<3 u too. I remember being really excited in middle school meeting someone else who liked computers, qbasic, and making things.
Figure 53 sounds like a cool place. The name makes me think of Level 42. Thanks for sharing your journey.
Making games in school was so much more fun than being glued to a screen 40+ hours a week, editing Kubernetes YAML files or learning a new JavaScript framework every six months.
That was a good camera