My Computer Geek Passport

First off, as I have read through a great many articles on computer programming I have run across articles of such quality that I am stunned and speechless. I have read reports of how people have organized their programming departments, how they managed projects, of the innovative and fun projects they are developing, and through it all I have wanted to pursue a programming project outside of the volunteer arena. There are those people out there with expertise, knowledge, skill, and talent who will probably never work in a volunteer market, yet they are the people I would love to learn from, the people I would love to work for. At times I am quite inspired to spend my days programming for a nameless, faceless corporate entity, working alongside talented geeks, and accomplishing Herculean feats.

Another aspect of programming rears its head and discourages me from even attempting this work, and that is my glaring and obvious ignorance. In all of my reading I have run across ideas that are far beyond me, concepts I cannot begin to grasp, let alone glimpse their importance. There are many areas in which I am yet unskilled, areas where I have little skill but am untested, and few areas of actual programming that I would say I have mastered. It was a dream of mine to develop some fun and fascinating computer program, but the more I think about the projects I would like to work on, the more I realize I do not know the first thing about them.

I would still like to work with a team of programmers, but I have a hard time believing it will happen anytime soon. My skills and expertise are gathered in a Linux arena, and in my area those skills are unwanted, ignored, and misunderstood. The more I look into the state of computer science the more of my own ignorance I see. I am paying the price for my specialization. I am no longer in a position to go back to school and learn, and so I wonder what will come of my dreams.

Lately I have been changing my role in the computer world. I have made a shift in my treatment of my computer. Where once I computed for the sake of the computer, now I use it as a tool to get a certain job done. Before I was not a user, now I am. I have real demands on my computer, tasks I want to accomplish, projects I want to work on, ideas I want to communicate, and my computer is the tool I use to get it done. Whereas before I could justify the time spent tinkering and toying around, learning new tricks and skills, now I want to spend more time on my projects, and less time on obtaining a working environment for my projects.

Has my passport to Geekdom been revoked? I want to be a programmer more than a System Administrator, but there is much I do not know. I want to use my personal computers for Userland activities (reading, writing, music, videos). My "world" is very strange to me now.