Odd jumpscare that greeted me as I walked into this room from down below.

Art and Creation vs Work

Adminisk8or

10/17/2023

Some weeks at work I find myself just finding a few things to do to fill in the blanks. Then there's weeks like this one where I've driven hundreds and hundreds of miles this last week, rebuilt a firewall (only to have it commit suicide on me twice in a row), and have my check engine light come on not once, but twice more after last week's repairs. Not a dull moment, so to speak.

But my proudest accomplishment this last week was two things dealing with the same matter. My wife and I have been attending a class to help us be better stewards of our finances; and although we've been working on building our own individual budgets over the past six or more weeks, this last weekend we finally sat down together and compiled our numbers together. Finally, we crunch our numbers to realistically decided what we could afford in the way of house payments.

But on top of that, I also pulled out my old, dusty coding hat and got to coding. I created us a database- front and back end- where we could keep track of it. In all honesty, it's been some months since I last tried to PHP or SQL anything, so this was a fun refresher. And what's more, I managed to get all the kinks worked out that very night!

Whenever I'm asked why I enjoy doing these things in my spare time- coding, network building, etc. I get funny expressions, like, "sorry... you do that for fun?" or, my favorite, "...but why?" In honesty, I never felt like I had a solid answer for why, other than I just found it fun and satisfying. But thinking more on it, I wondered to myself why it's satisfying. And I think the answer is because, for me, it's less of a hobby or job and more of an art.

Classically, in historical terms, people usually associate art with images, music or film. And say what you will about this modern era (or maybe write a volume or 500, it's a tumultuous time), but if there's one good thing to have come from the last 30 or so years, it's a change in perspective in terms of art. Games entered the scene, and now not only are they a fun entertainment outlet for people, but they can also be a developer's vision or dream of something they want to convey, whether it's visual, storytelling, or otherwise. And that's only the beginning- there's so many different ways we have learned to better appreciate art as a people, I feel.

And in a strange way, for me, network architecture and self-reliant system hosting allows me an outlet to express those feelings and ideas I have. Designing a network in such a way that "so-and-so can access this" but "such-and-such has limited access here", meanwhile I get notifications when this happens, and this tool monitors downtime, etc, etc. I know for most people, it amounts to the infamous idiom, "technical jargon", but for me, I feel like Jiro Horikoshi designing his Mitsubishi A6M Zero airplane; sure, I do some of what I do for a living, and sometimes it frustrates me that my efforts are restricted to a certain scope or outcome- but in the end, I love to see these strange structures of a digital nature- invisible nodes, like fragile but sure wires and joints all come together to form this invisible sculpture. It's all a matter of fine electronics working together just right- something that nature would statistically dictate to be almost perfectly impossible to happen- and yet, it all comes together just right.

I suppose every one of us has a passion in us like that- maybe to a different extent, and for most people, definitely of a different nature. And I've said it before on this blog, but I really strongly believe it- we are designed, by nature, to love creation. The idea of making something of our own hands by and our own works is a sensation we are born with. Even from a young age, we attempt to draw on a piece of paper- and although the outcome of that art project would be nothing more than a bunch of scribbles and dots, even at that young age we knew where the important priorities lie- not in the success of the thing, but in the joy of creation.

I fear I'm rambling a bit, now. I think you get the idea. So, keep honing in on your passions. If you don't know your "calling in life", don't worry! You might be surprised at how happy you are by some of the oddest and least presumptuous things in life, and that might not be a bad thing. I've certainly come to learn it wasn't for me and learning network engineering. Until next time, see ya!