Last week a friend passed on along a link to an article about Mac’s OS X, from a more "hacker friendly" viewpoint. The author has used many operation systems, and used Linux for quite some time before switching to OS X. In a a candid side note he addressed a rather interesting topic, one that has had me thinking for 2 days now. He makes a case about a false sense of accomplishment we get at the resolution of some projects; at the completion of some projects the time spent is greater than the achievement at the end. The example used in this case was Linux, and it got me thinking. He pointed out he got a joy of accomplishment when he could patch the kernel to get some non-standard device to work with Linux, where it did not before, and I have certainly been there before. While in the end I can continue to engage in such activities because it is my job, it did make me stop and think about my life away from work and what I want to be doing with that time. In short, I am faced with yet another situation where I must choose to grow up or continue some of my childish ways.
Since I married the woman of my dreams my life has changed, but not as I expected it would. I knew my free-time would be drastically different because I would have someone around to spend time with, and would need to spend time with. I did not know most of the pressure would be internal and not external; I did not know the pressures would not be due to the circumstances of marriage but in the responsibilities of duty (Both my wife and myself are "old fashioned" in our view of marriage, the husband being the leader but not dictator, thus my feeling of duty is not only self-imposed but agreed upon). I have found that the area of my free-time which I fight the hardest against is not the time I spend with my wife (as I thought) but in the time spent maintaining a family (chores, finances, et cetera). I find it quite difficult to spend time having fun when some aspect of our lives as responsible citizens is out of control (i.e. the budget is not up to date, or our checkbook is not balanced, or we do not know what home project we will work on next, etc.) yet I acknowledge we need to have fun to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Now I am an odd duck when it comes to fun, because I like to reconfigure computers and get obscure devices working where no other can. I enjoy spending hours working on one problem and besting it, not letting it best me. Herein lies the problem the commentary brought to light. Lately I have not wanted to be bothered with fixing my computer because I have other things I need to tend to before I can relax. The work I love is no longer a source of joy for me at home, because I have too many other things to do, yet in all of this my wife is not the one interrupting my life! I spent time thinking on this and I am still perplexed, because my attitude has changed yet it is not my wife’s doing, for when I wonder if I would spend more time with her if I did not have these intrusions I find I would not, yet just a few years ago these intrusions would be my source of fun. I can only conclude that my source of fun has shifted to accommodate my schedule and now I do not want to fiddle with a driver for a device that is supposed to make my life easier.
Here comes the hard part, because for so long that very attitude of fiddling with impossible technology was a part of my identity. I was quite happy and pleased to work on something few others could do, making a name for myself. I was thrilled to discover things I had not heard of before. I invested a great portion of my life into my work and enjoyed every minute of it. That work and those attitudes have given me the skills I have today, and have landed me the job I now have. And I want to turn my back on it, in some regards. I want to spend more time enjoying life in general than enjoying the struggle of problem solving. I want to spend more time writing stories than writing the word processor I might use to write stories. I want to spend more time playing games than trying to design one. Yet in all of this I do not want to lose my status as a "power user" and become a mere computer user who does not understand what is going on "under the hood".
There is another side to this argument, one that I am still pondering and wondering where it fits in. Throughout the world we marvel at great works of art that nearly achieve perfection. We value quality, and we even encourage characteristics which push a person to strive for their masterpiece, yet I am struggling with something that can appear to quality of product versus quantity of free-time. The error in my thinking lies in the type of work, such that spending hours working on an interface for a device that works perfectly well in a different environment is not as productive as using the other environment unless this problem is part of a greater whole which is my masterpiece (but it never is). In my decisions of how to spend my time I hope I will not neglect quality of work just to have more time. I hope I will continue to work on projects that bring me joy and fun and even further me in my chosen craft, yet I hope I can swallow useless pride and accept that a beloved part of me is now slowing me down and must be attended to.
I may not let go of my Linux skills, nor my Linux server, but I may have to use another OS (Mac OS X?) for my desktop machine, so I can get more work done at home and still enjoy an evening, and leave the fiddling for my job at work.