When you find out “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” stops you from progressing in your career.
I found myself looking at older solutions I was satisfied with, and I was like wow that turned out really great. Then realized that this mentality stopped me from progressing further. It felt like, okay after all these years, I have finally done it, found the best possible way of making software. At the same time I also knew there are no perfect way of doing software in reality. We can get to some really freaking awesome state in terms of software quality, but if we start loving what we have done, we just going to plateau.
Slowly but surely, after a lot of small to mid sized projects, it started to slowly occur to me this realization. That when I spend time looking at some old solution I built, I started feeling good about myself, because it was a nice project I have done. I was feeling like I am done with this software engineering thing overall, and know how to make things. And that this solution is the pinnacle of software. I knew it somewhere that this is some kind of weird lie I managed to come up with and there is no reason to say that.
Than I started thinking why do I had this weird idea in my mind?! Than I tried to look at the whole thing from a more distant view. That's when I realized that the code I write is just some bits on the computer’s hard drive, running each instruction at a time by the help of a quartz crystal and its really isn’t about being a magician and doing magic. Can I really like, or fell in love with some 1s and zeros? Does that even makes sense? In my mind it doesn’t anymore. And it also made me feel like an idiot at first.
Than I remember why did I started all this. I was wanted to help some other people through software and than I’ve got lost in jumping from hype train to the next hype train, and playing with frameworks that come out like a kid, being immersed in them and slowly but surely turned me to some other direction I realized I don’t actually like.
Now I feel like I can be more productive because I don't spent the time with saying we need X framework and Y tool to get things done. Now I can start with what the problem is and analyze that first, and not start out with what I used to love, code code and code.
After a while jumping in to the coding part was all about me loosing myself, forgetting about my daily problems, and being immersed fully in playing with all those frameworks and tools out there. And maybe that's a selfish thing to do. Or at least its much easier to run off track this way. And essentially losing not just ourselves, but the goal of why we started all this in the first place. And the goal of the current project we are working on.
Or maybe this is just the growing up part where we realize that some things we loved doing back than, is become about trying to loose ourselves in it as grown ups. Something we turn a blind eye to. Because its easier to shove it all away instead of dealing with those problems.
Do I feel motivation to do the same job, without loving it? Yes I do. And from what I can tell, it helps me stay more focused, work less, and enjoy my life more. I just needed to remember the right reasons why did I started making websites or applications to begin with. Which is to try to help others through my work in some positive way.
Overall, this felt like a big turn in how I look at what I do for a living. And made me feel 100 times better overall just by realizing all this. It was really a new perspective.
I am sure as hell I did learned a lot going into all those frameworks. But in the long run this would have just not worked.