Freedom
It’s August 1st and I am officially free. I just finished my final project at work and the only job I have lined up is burning my savings while I follow my dreams. There’s fear but there’s also relief.
I used to make music. I noticed my last release was 10 years ago. That’s a while. Since then I’ve gone to college, got a job making bespoke apps for businesses, got paid well for it, got my own place to live… and then got stuck. For years.
It wasn’t a bad experience. I learned so much. I went from barely competent junior web developer to senior web and mobile developer. I’ve created web apps in multiple frameworks and released mobile apps on iOS and Android. I earned the trust and respect of my boss and company. My taste and opinions informed the choice of tech for the whole organization to this day. I got nearly 8 years of real hands-on experience as a software developer. I proved to myself over and over again that I can make anything I want to make.
But therein lies the problem. During this time I never got the chance to make what I wanted to make. Yes, I worked on side projects. But when I spend all day writing code and thinking through complicated problems for others, I don’t really have enough left to turn around and do it again for myself.
Money has always been a difficult subject for me. Financial stress is the worst kind. I never had financial security before I went to school. I went to community college on a Pell grant. I was on EBT (aka food stamps) so I could afford to eat. I lived with my parents and had to borrow money frequently. I’m grateful I had that safety net well into my 20s, but any chance to escape that dependence and be my own person was huge. That’s what this job represented to me at that point. It was my golden ticket.
The years went on. The projects came and went. My pay and responsibilities increased. Things were good. There was growth. There was comfort.
Funny thing about growth. Sometimes you have a realization that changes the way you see big chunks of your life. I’ve recently been learning that I’m amazing at suppressing parts of myself. I don’t think that’s something one should aspire to be amazing at. It has been a useful skill to make it in the world but self-suppression incurs a debt. And that debt will eventually accumulate to the point where you can’t ignore it anymore.
That kid playing with sounds and sharing them on the internet didn’t go anywhere. I’ve picked up some new skills and experience, but I really just miss creating things for the love of it and sharing them with people. I realized that all of the things I’ve been spending my waking hours making for the past 7.5 years I either can’t share with the general public or wouldn’t want to because they’re not things I personally believe needed to exist. Fuck.
Once you have a thought like that you can’t unthink it. It follows you. That particular thought has been following me from project to project for the last three years. Would I use this? No. Am I excited about this? No. Then why am I making this? Because I’m getting paid. Funny thing about comfort…
For some people I think comfort alone would be enough. But I apparently happen to be an especially difficult kind of person who needs to spend my time on things that have some ineffable quality beyond the paycheck. I need to make things that feel worthwhile. I need to spend my time creating things I actually like and can be proud of. I want to pull out my phone and show them to people.
To be fair, if I found myself again in a position where I needed to worry about paying my rent and buying food then I would probably go back to singing any tune necessary to make those things happen. While I write this I’ve been trying to ignore my inner critic’s refrain of “first world problems first world problems first world problems”. That’s one way to look at it I suppose. But in this hypothetical case where I have less security than I do now, if I then achieved that security these thoughts would inevitably come back.
This is a stage I have arrived at because of the success I’ve gained by working hard at this job for all these years. The only path forward is to acknowledge that and solve my first world problems. All other paths lead backward.
Time to put the love of the craft first and make things for myself again. I hope others find value in the things that have value to me.