As my son has gotten older (he’s a teenager now), it’s been a real pleasure to introduce him to shows and movies that I enjoyed in the past, and either watch them fresh with him or revisit old favorites.
Lately, it’s been watching The Office from the beginning (up to season 5 now), usually a few episodes a night. Some of the early episodes are just as cringey as I remember, but the show still pretty much holds up even 20 years later. That got me thinking about the way that we seek the familiar and safe, especially in downtime.
There’s something always exciting in life about discovering new things, going new places and meeting new people. It stimulates our brains with new experiences and gives us a better view of the world. But there’s also something to be said to going back to a favorite tv show, movie, book, album, whatever and just unwinding in that. Something where you don’t have to follow plot, or make sure you didn’t miss a crucial scene - not because they aren’t important, but because you’ve heard the joke before, know what’s going to happen and quite frankly it doesn’t require your full attention.
I’ve found getting older that, with my son, I’ve been able to do both of these at the same time with the sharing of these shows. It’s new and exciting for him, but also familiar and relaxing for me. This is inherently part of being a parent and raising a kid, but it hits on a different level because unlike say, practicing tying shoes, this is something I actually enjoy doing as well. I like being able to tune out and enjoy the show (and, let’s be honest, probably watch it while I’m on my iPad or phone too) but also see him laugh at the jokes for the first time.
Streaming companies know that we crave these “comfort food” shows of course, and these escapes, that’s why Peacock is basically built entirely around The Office, Paramount Plus around Survivor and the Amazing Race and other reality TV, and Disney+ around…well, everything Disney owns. We pay for these shows we know and love, that we grew up with or represent a particular time in our lives, simply because of this desire for the familiar. Sure we will watch new stuff, and some of that new stuff will inevitably become comfort food as well, but that’s why things like FAST (Free Ad Supported Television) services are some of the most popular services out there - who wouldn’t want to flip on a channel and have 24/7 episodes of Friends streaming non-stop anytime you want?
I don’t really have a larger point to all of this, just observed my feelings when watching and sharing TV with my son about how unique the world is now when it comes to media. And certainly no judgement from me on what your comfort food is - Law & Order, trashy reality tv, 2000s HBO shows, whatever. It’s just interesting to me to see what will become the comfort food for the next generation when they have so many of our comforts immediately on hand.
Our brains can be real jerks sometimes. Sure, they are great for, you know, solving math and painting and keeping our bodies functioning, but they can also totally mess with us. Sometimes they’ll make us forget what we were doing and make us get distracted by something else, or make us say something immediately (triggered by some random memory/experience) that we would never say if we paused for a minute. And sometimes they can try to make us solve stupid problems when we should be sleeping, problems that they decide are SUPER URGENT!!!! right then and there.
Case in point: last night in the middle of the night, I noticed that the nightlight I have plugged into a power strip in the bathroom so I don’t stumble around in the dark, wasn’t on. Half asleep, I got up and tried to fumble with it. Taking it out of the strip and plugging it back in? No dice. Flipping the power strip switch? Nada. The light wasn’t turning on.
I go back to bed and of course now my brain is in problem solving mode. Is it a flipped fuse in the fuse box? Did all the recent rain fry something in the bathroom and now I need to call an electrician? How much will that cost and will that interfere with any meetings I have today and do I just need to replace the night light entirely and where did I buy it from and how old is it and maybe I need a different color one to sleep better but it has to be bright enough to see and on and on and on.
Tossing and turning, I finally manage to get some vestige of sleep for a few hours, waking up on and off and of course see that the light isn’t on before falling back asleep again. Finally, I get up about 30 minutes earlier than usual, groggy but now ready to wake up. I glare at the stupid night light and, with the benefit of slightly more sleep, examine it again.
The power strip the night light was plugged into, was unplugged from the wall. Plug it back in and everything works fine, of course.
Jerk brain I tell you. Jerk brain.
The always amazing Aubrey posted yesterday about not using her blog for primarily tech things, and the larger point of having hobbies away from the computer. I can really identify with this because, after almost 30 years as a developer, the idea of sitting down at the computer for “fun” is just…not that appealing anymore.
Aubrey says that she feels pressure to make her blog about tech things, all the cool stuff she is building outside of work, etc. And that pressure is real if you are in any social media space or interact with other developers. The place that I work, Lullabot, is filled with some amazingly talented people who all share a genuine curiosity about the world and that makes it a great place to work, most of the time. But with the rise of AI into literally everything, those genuinely curious folks seem to be posting more about “Look what I made the LLM do for me!” and less about “Look at this cool trail I discovered when on a hike”. I won’t get into the (many, many) qualms I have about AI, but I think that when all of your peers are posting these “neat” side projects that inevitably consumed a weekend or two, and that’s not your jam, I think it’s human nature to feel “less than” because you aren’t doing it too. We see it time and time again in tech, an unspoken pressure to be sharing and showing off what you’ve figured out to do.
And that can be great - I can’t count how many new techniques or ideas I’ve learned from the things I’ve come across on my social media feeds over the years - and how that has inspired me to try new stuff and get better. But I think there is a fine line between running with an idea and making your primary interests “playing on the computer”.
After hustling for 11 years to keep my business afloat, I had many days where I was glued to the computer just because stuff had to be done. It’s one thing to be doing it for money, to make sure you can feed your kids, but the drawback is that it sucks away your energy, your creativity and your passion and you just have zero desire to experiment, zero desire to learn and most of all zero desire to sit in that chair any longer than you have to. If loving what you do means you never work a day in your life, then the opposite of that is that your life becomes work because you love what you do.
At this point in my life, I’m beyond that. I love being a front end developer and writing code, but it doesn’t define me and it isn’t something that I enjoy doing outside of work. Full stop. I recently finished the last season of The Bear and a big take away I got from that (and the whole series) is just because you’re really good at doing something, doesn’t mean that that is who you are. And if not wanting to start or maintain multiple side projects makes me less than my peers, well I think I’m ok with that.
Sure, I’ll have some insecurities and doubts and imposter syndrome at times, but the days that I can step away from my desk, eat dinner with my kids and hear about their day - those are the best days. And I’d rather spend my weekends watching football (both kinds), taking care of my yard and enjoying the two seasons of Florida (summer and Christmas) than toiling away at some code.
And though this blog does have some tech related posts on it, those came and were posted when I had a eureka moment or just a neat thing I wanted to share. More importantly though, those posts came from moments away from my desk, when true creativity or ideas sprang forth naturally, rather than trying to keep up with others or trying to showcase what I can do, and to me those always feel more genuine than performative programming ever will.
Maybe in my 40s I just lean more into the “life” side of “work/life balance” and to me, and hopefully you, that’s an ok place to be.
(PS - I’m not a fan of the title of this post, but it felt like it fit, so forgive the trope)
My grandmother passed away, at aged 92, back on July 18. It wasn’t terribly surprising - she lived on her own till she was 90 but a series of falls and brief illnesses wore her down so that she then moved to independent living, then assisted living till finally transitioning to hospice. There wasn’t any specific cause of death, no pain at the time of her passing - it was “natural causes” or “old age”, which is something all of us can hope for ourselves and our loved ones. She lived a good life, with lots of family, and as she was my last grandparent, I’ll miss her a lot.
I’m 44 at the time of this post and beyond the sadness of her death, what has really hit home to me is that I’ve reached the point in my life where death will become more and more common. Any of us, no matter how old, can of course pass at any time. But when I stop to think about how my oldest uncle will be 81, my aunts are nearing 70 and both of my parents - thankfully both healthy and active - are also over 70 and nearing it.
It’s a strange feeling to think about how we view our family members as one way, only for time and reality to show that they aren’t. I still see my mom in my mind as she was 20, 30 years ago and the same for my dad. But in seeing and speaking with them, I of course realize they aren’t really like that - my mom’s had hip and knee replacements, my dad is a bit more forgetful.
It’s something that we all go through I guess if we are fortunate to live well into middle age and have family members who do the same, but no matter how old you are, the reality of mortality for ourselves and the ones we love will always hit hard.
A few weeks back, I saw some calls on Mastodon to cancel Micro.blog (the service I use to publish this) because they started allowing publishing on Twitter (it will never be X to me). This after a big hullabaloo over Proton and their CEO’s donations/support for a right-wing party in Europe. Wordpress is a dumpster fire of petty bickering and bizarre choices in leadership. And if you keep digging through the internet long enough, the list of people upset about the choices software developers or their companies CEOs make with their tools goes on and on, from both the left and the right, till I’m sure it would possible to find something wrong with every company, every developer, out there.
I’m tired ya’ll.
I’m tired of keeping my head on a swivel, jumping from one program/service to the other because of something some person said or did at that company. I do my best to make as ethical decisions I can with the tools and services I use but it’s tiring staying on that treadmill. Not from the constant outrage that bubbles up every day, but from the sheer effort required to switch from service to service. I switched to Proton about 2 years ago, over a multi-day process, moving all of my stuff and over 25 years of email to Proton. As a service, I’ve been happy with the reliability and quality of their products, which is what you should expect in any transaction right? I pay you for a product, you deliver said product and we go about our business. But the thought of going through that process again, of moving all of my stuff to Fastmail or something equivalent, because some random CEO said or did something or believes something I disagree with, is frankly exhausting.
The people calling for boycotts or switching, they don’t seem to consider the time needed to make those switches. Not everyone has hours of time to switch all of their stuff around, or have the luxury to spend time finding alternatives, or sometimes the technical skill required to do that. It’s an act of pure privilege to do that and expect others to follow you. And they forget that software can never be neutral because software is people.
People write it, people sell it or give it away and all of those people have thoughts and opinions that I agree or disagree with, that’s just living in an interconnected world. And for better or worse (likely worse, but that’s for another day), we live in a capitalistic world so we just have to work within that system to find what’s best for us. So that means tradeoffs and budgeting and accepting that nothing is ever perfect, will never agree fully with what we personally might think and feel and believe. You can do your best, but inherently that underlying understanding is always there, until something bubbles up and we have to pickup our pitchforks and torches again. And if we just follow the outrage cycle and jump ship to one place, whose to say that 3 months later THAT place won’t do something that we don’t agree with and then we have invest all of the time and effort all over again.
I’m not saying don’t have lines or deal breakers - we all do. I switched from Twitter to Mastodon four years ago because I saw where that was going, how it was already turning into a Nazi bar and that wasn’t something I wanted to support with my time or effort or money. That was a conscious and ethical decision. But Micro.blog allowing publishing to Twitter, something I will never do? That’s not a redline for me because for my $5 a month I get the convenience of just opening a tab, writing this post and hitting publish and not thinking about it again. I’m not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water because of one idea that the Micro.blog team had.
Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. Maybe it makes me lazy, or maybe I’ve fallen victim to vendor lock-in. But I don’t have the time to find alternatives or sit down and write my own system for publishing or find a different tool, so I’m willing to make that trade-off. Of course, these implicit agreements are always evolving, and maybe Micro.blog or Proton or some other company I use on my uses page will do something so egregious to me that I can’t take it anymore, and the time needed to switch will be worth it. But for now, I just accept that trade-off because I’d rather spend my limited free time frankly just doing something else than looking for alternatives.
Software is never neutral. It’s written by people, and it’s always evolving and changing and growing, just like the people who make it. Sometimes for good and sometimes for bad but always changing and always being the product of the people who made it. Lord knows we aren’t short on alternatives for just about anything out there. And if your own personal red line is crossed then you should certainly find alternatives, I’m never against that and have them myself. But I’ve been down the never-satisfied road of changing and switching and storming castle gates for too long now and let me tell you, it’s exhausting.
So as you read forums or posts or articles about why XYZ company/tool is bad, remember that software is never neutral, software is people, and people are complicated and you’re never ever going to be 100% satisfied. You might be happy with your choice of tool for now, but inevitably something will come up you don’t agree with.
Don’t fall into the trap of following the outrage. Set your own red lines and ignore the noise. You’ll be a lot happier that way.