Standing at the Crossroads

Isn’t that how life always is? You finally find yourself where you wanted to be, and then everything changes.

It’s been a rough year so far, in several ways. I might write about that at some point, but right now I want to focus on this: the age-old question of “what the hell am I going to do with my life?”

The past few years, I’ve worked as a freelance software developer / consultant. It’s by no means my dream gig, but it is something I’m good at, and well … it pays the bills.

With changing legislation, that road looks to be coming to an end, though. I always intended the freelancing to be a stopgap, but now I’m suddenly faced with making some hard choices.

I’m standing at these crossroads, wondering where to go next.

I’m a nerd, and I deeply love writing software. I still do it for fun. I’m still passionate about programming languages, learning all the weird edges and corners. I thrive on deep knowledge. At the same time, the type of work I’ve been doing has often left me very understimulated. There have been plenty of challenges, but generally less of the “we have this hard problem” variety, and more of the organisational variety.

I crave meaning, and meaning has been in short supply.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in these past few years. I found my passion for writing again, both in fiction and in blog posts like these.

I found that I love to teach, both in my professional and personal life. One of my partners has been encouraging me to do a workshop on connective impact play, and I considered doing that at an unconference-type event.

Ultimately, I didn’t feel quite confident enough to do the impact workshop, but I did facilitate a session on ADHD, and played my Consent Game as a group activity.

I absolutely loved it.

I love the energy of being in front of a group or crowd. I’d love to do more of that.

Designing games also seems to match with how my brain works, so suddenly I have another new thing I want to explore.

I’ve been talking to a friend about teaching a course on software engineering at a local college (HBO), and that sounds like something that would make me happy. I’ve been working on a libre / open source platform for authors, and that also gives me a lot of joy.

But well, I also have bills to pay.

Now, I realise this is pretty much “First World Problems the Blog Post”, since I have options. This isn’t so much “how will I eat”, as “how will I spend my time and energy in a way that’s meaningful to me, while still making a living?” Definitely not the bottom rungs of the Maslov pyramid.

I’m not asking for answers or advice, I mostly wanted to share where I’m at. I won’t spurn wisdom offered, but I also know this is ultimately my journey.

Who knows? I might meet a well-dressed stranger at those crossroads who will offer me all I desire, for the mere price of my soul?

More likely though, I’ll do what I’ve often done. Choose one road, see if I like it, and if I don’t … I’ll just backtrack and choose another.

I’ll get there in the end.