Once I got past high school, I went to University, where I finally felt like I was in the company of like-minded people. To be honest I don't think I ever found anyone like me, but I at least felt safe in my daily life. Once at University I worked even harder than I had in high school, with the light at the end of that tunnel being the degree I would have, which would surely help in making life as easy as I had predicted in high school.
By this point you can probably see the problem that I have only just seen myself. All these years I had this idea that because of some emotional and physical suffering I endured in the early years of my life, that somehow qualified me to have better luck down the road than other people. The idea that solidified in my mind at the time was that pain and suffering would lead to a reward. In Cargo-Cult fashion I assumed that a reward would automatically follow my sacrifice.
This belief I have harboured for so many years has just led to more desperation and frustration with the fact that my life hasn't turned around at some point. My life is no easier now than it was when I was in high school, and it probably never will be unless I make the right choices.
In the end I have realised that the hard parts of my life are of my own creation. I have always been so resistive to bending or changing my thinking for other people. My logic was that changing something as core as what I felt about something emotionally would somehow dilute who or what I was as a person. That's not to say I never changed my mind on something or took on someone else's thoughts and opinions. It's just that when I became emotionally attached to an idea, I no longer felt that I could give it up easily without sacrificing my integrity and somehow cheating myself.
In reality this just made me hard to work with: people would not understand my attachment to a particular idea or opinion, and would either give up and leave me alone, or become actively aggressive towards me. This was what has made my life so lonely. I have created my isolation through a combination of defensiveness and a focus on the wrong goals and ideals. Luckily, a few people throughout my life have understood some of these aspects of my personality and have learned to live with me for who I am.
I have always been focused on being the "best X", where X has been school student, university student, and now hacker. During the later years of my university education and my early working career, I have been obsessed with becoming a "hacker". Not the type that breaks into other people's computers. The type that creates, tinkers and improves.
Although I wouldn't class myself as a hacker, I have always strived to follow the wisdom handed down by the community. Be good at programming, very very good. Always ask questions, never trust a black box. Do things in the smallest and simplest way possible (this one is ambiguous, some people seem to think it means produce the least code possible, while other people think it is about some greater concept of efficiency). Push the boundaries of what is possible.
Although the community and these mantras can be positive, I think I have allowed them to amplify the existing defects in my personality. Rather than taking these goals and using them in a positive and inclusive way, I chose to use them in a negative and exclusive way. Instead of choosing to maximise how well I worked when I was programming, I just programmed more. Instead of asking other people questions when I needed help, I chose to ask questions as challenges to other people, in a manner that showed off my existing knowledge, rather than augmenting it. Instead of doing things as simply as possible, I chose to do things the hardest way.
This is not as a result of the hacker community (though I do see others in the community making the same mistakes as me), but rather a result of how my personality amplified the ethos of the community, and vice versa. In the end this is my fault, I am the one that made the decisions that led to this point.
So what can I do to start improving these flaws in my personality, and their effects? Here's some things I think I could start with:
- I need to focus less on the task of programming itself, and more on the periphery tasks that maximise how effectively that time is spent. I need to do documentation and reports, because those will help other people understand what I am doing, and they may even help me understand what I did when I come back to it later. Take some time out; exercise more, socialise and interact with other people, have some fun.
- Be polite to other people. Refrain from telling someone something unless it's actually important. Just answer people's questions with exactly what they need to know, no more. I should always listen more than I speak.
- I have to consider factors other than my own effort and enjoyment when engineering solutions. I can't always use my favourite language for programming a solution because I will be creating more work (and hence cost) for myself and others when I have to develop something from scratch. I need to give more weight to other people's ideas, especially when they come from those with more experience or authority than me.
- I should stop hating companies that never did anything to hurt me personally. Most people are not going to try and exploit me. I need to stop assuming that working for someone else makes me a slave; I chose to work here. I need to remember that I have important customers who need the service I help provide. I should stop complaining about how unfair and evil big companies are; they're full of people just like me.
In the end I need to make these changes to live a happier and healthier life. I think it is possible to retain my goal of becoming a great hacker, and at the same time become a better person and enjoy life more. Time will tell.
Nick.
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