After my last post, I feel that there is something else I wish to share with everyone. If there is one primary characteristic problem with people today, it is that they try to do to much. Trust me, I can sympathize, I am the exact same way. In this quick-rich-schemin', lose-500-pounds-in-one-week-dietin', just-buy-this-one-last-gadget-and-you-can-get-done-everything-you-want-to-get-done paradox of a world we live in, not enough of us take the time to enjoy life. Even when we know there is a problem in our life, we often do not fix the cause of the problem. What do we do? We treat the symptoms rather than the problems. How many of us get stressed when we get overloaded? Now how many of us have invested in productivity-gaining, seven-habits-of-highly-effective-people, guide-to-stress-free-productivity solutions? I would venture a guess that most of us have. Why do we feel the need to decrease the stress yet don't address the issues that are causing the stress in the first place?!?!?
Like the title says, there are only 24 hours in one day. Let's say that most of us work a 9 hour day, sleep for 7 hours (to maintain a healthy life style), commute for 1-2 hours, and spend 1-2 hours a day consuming food. Well, that only leaves us 4-6 hours a day to get other things done (and this doesn't include if you have a family!!!). Why in the world then would you try to do another 8 hours of work a day outside of work? Well, we are humans and we have freedom of choice, so let's take advantage of that freedom! (Remember, just like programming, just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should*).
Can we do more in those 24 hours and be less stressed? It's certainly possible, but only when treating the symptoms and not the disease. I could hop over the fence over to the conspiratorial side, but I wish to just straddle the fence right now :). Has technology made our lives better? In a lot of ways, most certainly! However, has technology made our quality of life potentially worse? I would say yes. With technology, a lot of us our lulled into the false belief that technology makes our lives easier because we can automate more of our tasks, and have more time for ourselves. Has this proved to be true? Of course not. What do we do instead? Give ourselves more to do!!! Why in the world would we do that?!?!
Now, I digress a bit. I know there are many of you out there that absolutely love programming and do not live stressed lives. Those of you like this may be tired of me already and asking “why all this complaining all of the sudden”? It's because I feel like I am surrounded by a bunch of developers who absolutely love programming, live to program, and I am the ugly duckling of the group. I feel like those of you may look at my development talent and consider it largely wasted because I am not taking full advantage of that talent. Please understand that I am trying to make two vastly different groups of people happy and anytime you try to make everyone happy, you are simply asking for trouble. There are those other developers and peers out there that consider me a worthwhile investment as a programmer. And then there are those that know of my jazz talent and feel that I really “have it” as a jazz musician. By trying to satisfy both groups of people, I only wind up letting both of them down.
Here's the dilemma though. Which group do I hold more dear to my heart? And here is the biggest problem. There are people like Rory, Chris Sells, and Jim Blizzard that I feel have invested a bit in me as a developer (whether it be emotionally, physically, or what have you). I feel like I am letting them down and doing them an injustice by not being the best developer I can be. However, I also feel that no matter how hard I try, even if I do make them proud of me as a developer, I will never truly be happy as a person. Why? Because I am not fulfilling the one part of my life that I need to fulfill in order to be happy - music. On the other side of the fence are my jazz peers. Over the last 6 months to 1 year, I have devoted so much time to software development, and so little time to music, that I feel that I am definitely letting them down. Which road dare I take though? The financial benefits and money are in software development. The emotional happiness and spritual fullfillment are in music. It may sound like an easy decision to most of you, but is a decision I have fought with myself over for 5+ years now (ever since I became a software developer).
To some of you, this may sound like a goodbye letter. Is this a goodbye letter? By no means!!! You will hear from me from time to time, and I will still be around as a developer (I'm not going to throw that gift away!!!). I will still be posting to this blog, but perhaps on a more personal and musical level than a developer level. I hope there is at least one nugget of wisdom in this long post that at least one person out there can grab on to. If anyone out there is also struggling with this kind of issue in their life, I would love to have you make a comment here or drop me a line so I know I'm not alone! 'Til next time, God Bless!