The Colorado stay-at-home order is shaking some things up in my life, and some of this is for the better, I think. Almost everything that was making me busy before has been put on hold, and I’m having to ask myself some really tough questions about what needs to change in my life.
I write a lot about knowledge and specialization because it’s fascinating to me and I haven’t figured it out, yet. On the one hand, being highly specialized can often win you a very high salary, but on the other hand, the moment that specialization becomes outdated, your salary could go to zero. In general, though, we all have jobs that are “specialized”, meaning we learn a particular activity well enough that somebody is willing to pay us to do it. Americans have long used the pejorative title “jack of all trades, master of none” as a dig at people who prefer breadth of knowledge to depth of knowledge. It clearly demonstrates what our society values. I think it’s unfortunate.
I have a deep-seated desire to be good at what I do. To an extent, success on the job promotes positive self-esteem. But the real struggle comes from figuring out just how much study I need to do outside of work to be good at what I do. Compounding the issue is that what I do is not the same as who I am, and I frequently vacillate between loving and hating programming.
Let’s consider my job (programming) with my passion (er, let’s just say archaeology for now). Long ago, I realized the sad truth that even if I managed to remember every single detail in the voluminous Prehistoric Archaeology book I used for class, it really wouldn’t help me achieve anything. It would largely be a bunch of dumb, static facts, which may not even be facts if somebody else comes along and realizes something new that changes the conclusions. And the same is true of programming. If I learned my core language (C#) to extreme depth, how would that actually affect me in my job? I guess I’d have to look less up on Google, but how much do you really need to understand the intricacies of building a ‘struct’ if you never need to build one? It’s easy to get excited about being an expert at something, but expertise rarely accomplishes anything meaningful. Job or passion or both or whatever.
But don’t we WANT to be experts? Don’t we WANT to possess something that is ours, that sets us apart from other people?
I think often that’s what the desire for expertise ultimately boils down to. Identity. And maybe pride, in some cases. But other times I think it’s more complex. I’m starting to realize that the appeal for me is the sense of security. If I can be expert at what I’m doing, then maybe that will keep me employed, or allow me to earn more (even though I clearly don’t NEED to earn more), or give me the CONFIDENCE to move forward in my career. Like…if I’m smart and can be a go-to person, than I’ll be in-demand, and far less likely to be fired or laid off. But does it ever really work like that?
One temptation for me is to learn the intricacies of a database I work with, SQL Server. SQL is one of the few technologies that I have worked with ever since my first year of being a software developer. But my brain has a difficult time thinking in terms of set theory, which is what relational databases are built on. I’m pretty good at catching issues in the database, but I’m not naturally talented at writing database code, and fully intend to move away from database-centric jobs. So why am I tempted to study more of it? Security. To be valuable at my job. But why study something you don’t want to work with? Why actually set yourself up to do work you don’t enjoy? It’s insanity. Why do I do this to myself?
More on the hobby front, it really does boil down to identity. So many of us want to be a particular “type” of person, who’s highly knowledgeable in this or that. I grow weary of this because often I don’t care. I love snowshoeing, but I don’t know how to assess avalanche terrain very well, so I tend just to go snowshoeing in areas where that isn’t even a concern. Do I need to push my limits and get more extreme? Do I need to become “snowshoe guy”?
What’s hard about learning for both employment and hobbies is that both can be good! Sometimes I don’t study because I’m lazy. Then I feel all conflicted inside, and it’s like, “Dude, you were just too busy reading stupid memes to sit down and read actual content this evening”. But I’ll feel the pressure and be all like, “Waaa! The pressure to learn is so much!” I mean, you can read a book on SQL Server and it’s not the end of the world.
But…this is the reset. I feel it deep inside. I am NOT going to call any of these lockdowns a “good thing”, because people are dying. But the bad can be used for good, and this is forcing me to come face to face with some of my demons. What is the new normal that I want in my life? How much more torture at the hands of my career am I going to endure?
One thing I really desire in my life is greater efficiency. Instead of feeling I need to read back through 1500 pages of C#, it’d be nice to just rest easy in what I know and occasionally be able to browse the subjects I don’t understand as well. Instead of “upping” my snowshoe game, I’d rather just get out more often. As for subjects like archaeology, it’d be nice to simply allow myself to buy a book every great now and then and enjoy it without feeling the need to memorize everything.
Of course, it would also be freeing to throw all these books in a pile and light them on fire. Yeah! I get tired of believing that what I know always has to be validated by books. How did that crap ever get into my head?