Everything is Trivial until it Means Something
I two weeks off work to drive around the western part of the U.S. and this was the first vacation that I'd actually ignore emails and slack messages. I shocked myself by not even brining my laptop. While I didn't have the major withdrawal symptoms I suspected I might and I was surprisingly okay with just -- not thinking about work, I did have a hell of a time getting back into the swing of things when I came back.
Anything done well - cannot be trivial.
My job is cool, we solve cool problems and you really couldn't ask for a better environment to work in. But lately it's been a bit draining. For a solid decade I've been working on ridiculously hard problems. I'm sure some sub conscious part of me likes the idea of chilling out on that a little, but the habitual me has a rough time making little buttons with little features per user request. It makes me feel under utilized I suppose but more importantly, it's impossible to get motivated about. When I'm trying to figure out how well some new technology might solve some funky old problem, or re-imagining the data structures we've been working with, it invokes the kind of anxiety in me that apparently I need for motivation.
One of my team member actually asked if I was heading out the door. I've had 4 pull requests in two months and I was trying to honestly answer his question when I realized that I'm not so much burnt out as much as I am just -- kinda bored.
The NSA, The Navy, and DARPA all have in common a limitless supply of new things to start playing with when the old ones get stale, and my current employer kind of expects me to keep working on the same things even after all the fun problems have been solved, and that means little buttons with little features, and the other day on our way for Mexican food one of the guys on my team told me that maybe I can imagine really clean code that's really well organized as a sort of difficult problem in itself.
The hardest problems aren't the ones you're already inspired to solve.
It kinda seemed like he just misses the old me. The me with 4 pull requests per day, not per 2 months, but I could tell that he meant that and I put some honest effort into the idea. A day or so later when I was listening to a Jordan Peterson lecture he said "Anything done well cannot be trivial" or something a bit like that, and it really sank in. There's inexhaustible richness in everything around me. In every little problem.
The same way that while on vacation I wasn't thinking "Okay we just have to get to the beach and then hurry up and get sunburnt so we can go do the next thing" -- I should be enjoying the moment at work. Programming has always been my creative outlet, so I never had to apply this sysophian idea to it, but just that though, that the challenge doesn't need to be the Grand Canyon, the challenge can be enjoying the drive.
Meaning can be applied sparingly.
Not every problem is sexy. But the problem of how to get motivated to solve problems that aren't motivating is a far more difficult problem than any of the problems I'm proud of solving. So let's drink to that.