remnants

once upon a time i liked to write code. to program magical little things. helpers, tools, generators, sometimes a library or two. when i decided to professionalize it, this was mostly motivated by other things which i don't want to get into. ever since back in the day, finding something new created a spark, a hype if you will. a new programming language, a new framework, a tool, an idea, a vision. anything could spark the fire. gemini once did so, too. i'll suck up the information, dive into it all, learn some of it, make plans, bigger, better plans.

finally life returns and from the hype needs to come a schedule, with milestones, features and a rough roadmap for myself so i can see it through. why can't i just sink a weekend into it, call in sick and sink a few more days into it? that "life" i speak about is called <family>. many others are in the same boat, they schedule out their ideas and then sequentially put them into code and some day they reach a product state that they can be satisfied with.

could i be like that? i always hoped so, but i can't. writing a few sections of code holds no calmness, no relaxation, no peace of mind for me. it's a means to an end, a very complicated, time-consuming means to an end even. my brain doesn't digest this anymore as positive.

a few days ago someone posted about nim-lang. a compiled language that looks a little like a weird mix of c, rust and python. damn, i was so hyped, i read through most of the specs, made a plan to rid myself of that stupid mattermost electron app at work, finally learn some curses implementation and be my own heroine! but you can already see the problem. proud to say though that this time i caught it early. before even starting.

my head is already negotiating with myself about this. nim could become my go-to language for all the projects that i wanted to do (still got the idea to write a mud, still got the idea to replace the mattermost client, still have a ton of perl and ruby code in the form of helper scripts and tools, needing replacement). nim could be the next thing i could find a great job in (right, i left software development for devops/ops because i hated the industrialization and customer focus in the field). nim has a small community, so i could finally earn fame, or at the very least make my name known (like that ever worked, sinking thousands of hours into a library that no one wants/needs).

the reality is this though. i rarely program anything. with my constant quest for improved minimalism there is little need for tools and software that doesn't already exist and for the most part has existed for decades, feature completion yay!). i find my calmness in painting. and after my next batch of miniatures i'll try to learn pixel art. for myself. not for fame, not for efficiency, not for a great career. and that's the thing that grounds me, keeps me still and balanced every single day. whether my past and the programming lead me here, or whether it was a distraction, a bad one too, i'll never know. but for the first time i didn't let my mind trap myself. i'm glad. enough to even write a dedicated log entry about it.