No Direction

In case there's anyone reading this blog, you might have noticed that I've rather lost my sense of direction. I don't know exactly how this happened, so I'm writing this post to lay out what I think's gone on.

Essentially, my biggest hurdle is boredom. I simply don't find things interesting that I used to, at least not the useful things. In particular, I find software, and the development of it, uninteresting. This is rather fatal for someone whose career has been almost entirely in software development. I don't hear about software that I think "Oh, I must try that out", ever. It just doesn't happen.


I wasn't always this way. I used to like computer games, and I was very much interested in the development of AI systems. Most of my major developments since University have been complex algorithmic systems. But somehow the business came to seem very, very trivial to me, endlessly repetitive. There just don't seem to be any new ideas. I've just spent too long looking at these things, so there's no marvel in any of it, no admiration for the engineering behind various software efforts. They're just the product of hours spent plodding away at the same cycle of analysis, design, implementation, test, rinse, repeat.

Talking about software development seems mind-numbing, I can't bear to talk shop with anyone. The intricacies of the latest and greatest development methodologies, which are the same as they always were, but have new names. The wonderful tools for making people faster coders, hiding the fact that development is incredibly slow and people grind for years and years on the same projects. Everyone's tedious and always totally arbitrary opinion on the very best practices. The hackneyed jokes and observations about the psychology of programmers. The sad tribalism around roles and technological choices, as if somehow coding on Linux OSes is an entire philosophy.

Mind you, I feel the same way about some other things I liked, too. Movies and books. Somehow, I can't find any interest in fictional stories any more. I was a fan of fantasy and sci fi, but over the last few years, every new one of these I've read seems worse than the last, more formulaic, longer, less consequential. I've tried reading other kinds of fiction, the less pulpy variety, but somehow I find them actually worse, even more formulaic, the more they try not to be. Whatever it is in there that's supposed to make such aesthetic choices more serious, the more detailed characterizations, or more work on the dialog, just makes me sad, to think that someone has a point they wish to hide behind such rhetoric. At least speculative fiction doesn't usually bother to pretend its got a deep point.

As for movies, well, admittedly I haven't really widened my scope much. They're bloody expensive and they hog the TV, which I figure might as well be being enjoyed by my wife and kids. But the offerings of Hollywood these days are just a study in how bad things can get. I really struggle to stay awake during movies.

Philosophizing? I majored in that, after all. Unfortunately, I've come to think it's a silly pursuit, on the whole. While it is fun to speculate about the boundaries of various kinds of knowledge, that's about all it's good for. Perhaps that's why I liked speculative fiction, because it resembles Western Philosophy so much. Logic itself is almost a parody of a study. Touted as being at the core of knowledge, a basic building block of thought, advanced study of logic does not even address knowledge. Beyond first year at University, logic stops being applied to any problems except mathematical ones, and even then only its own kind.

Music? Well, I still mostly like what I used to like, but I do feel I should listen to new things more. Unfortunately I don't like anything new, in the sense of hearing something and thinking "wow, I want to follow that group/artist". Indeed, I struggle to hear the lyrics at all, and the sound of the music itself seems to have strangely widened and narrowed at the same time. As for immersing myself into the study of old music, that's one of the few things that actually makes me angry when people do it, as if it's a clever thing to do. There's something so anally retentive about it, I have to just switch off, or I'll nut off.

Is this symptomatic of depression? Am I finding the shit side of things because I'm depressed? I don't know. It seems quite possible to me that things really are just dull, and that's depressed me. Chicken/egg thing. I don't even know if it's a useful question. I know I'm a bit bummed, so what use is a formal diagnosis? Indeed, my brief time spent with a counselor made me lose a lot of respect for psychiatry generally. It seems to very much be a matter of them listening to you working it out for yourself. Expensively.

How do you make yourself interested in things? I know the answer to some extent - you just immerse and forget your other concerns, and there you go. I can easily do that with practically anything, indeed, I can do it far too easily, and lose days, weeks, years. That's part of why I won't do it any more, without being sure that a) I'm genuinely interested in it and b) It's in some way practical for me, in proportion to the time spent on it.

So I return to the problem - what should I get interested in? What direction should I take?

At the moment, my only real insight is that things that are factual are more likely to be useful. Preferably the more general skills. I'm hoping that in immersing myself into such study, an interesting field might open up before me. Or perhaps I'll discover a new talent.

A thought experiment I've conducted a few times has been "what would I do if money was no object?". The answer has ironically been "immerse myself in study". Which makes me think I'm interested in it, at least at some level. But what to study? This question is a work in progress.

Orcon, get your act together

Wow, Orcon just charged me $154.90 after I connected with them on a plan I thought was free until January, since that's what the salesman at the door told me. Suddenly I'm wondering if I got conned, or if I dreamed the whole thing up, until I found this still sitting on my desk:

Having just sat through 40 mins of waiting for customer service on hold, and hearing the message that I can use their website for all of this over 100 times, and then being simply disconnected mid-call after getting someone who could not even comprehend my query, I'm loathe to pick up the phone again.

I never actually received any kind of confirmation message from them after connection, telling me about my website login (which is why I had to endure the phone call). Indeed my first contact from them, post install, was a strange automated message telling me I had zero usage, which had been escalated into a technical problem. This happened because I had not connected to their router yet, still using my Telecom connection until I was certain the whole connection through to Orcon had been successful, and my phone number had been put through. I then got another one a bit later saying the problem was now resolved (presumably when I plugged in and started using the service).

So, nice offer, Orcon, and the broadband is nice and fast. But charging me for it now is a complete violation of our agreement, and your phone support leaves a lot to be desired. Hoping I don't end up regretting ever having had anything to do with you....

End of Semester

Final lectures were Friday. I'm now on study break.

I'm taking a moment here to summarize the amazing discoveries of the semester. These observations are glib, of course. If anyone wants to query/dispute them, feel free.

1. Students have become swots, but they're not brighter for it
2. A number of subjects have emerged between the old subjects, and struggle for recognition
3. Mathematics seems to have got easier since the early 90s, but it is also taught better
4. Large scale student political engagement seems to be finished
5. The practicality of subjects studied is unknown to both students and staff
6. Mature students are assumed to not exist at undergraduate level
7. The facilities have improved dramatically
8. Costs have increased for everything from courses to books to food
9. The Internet and mobile phones have changed the face of interaction as much for students as everyone else
10. It's hard to find people who can make decisions
11. It's hard to find people who have plans for the future beyond a few years ahead
12. Staff appear to treat students more like children than I recall in the past
13. There seems to be no central congregation point for the student body
14. Students as a group seem to be disjointed, fragmented, compartmentalized
15. There's a higher level of respect for authority than I remember