Self Discovery
In Februrary 2022, I quit my job as a software engineer. I was the lead of a small team, myself and two other coders. It was in a lot of ways a decent job, and since Covid had the ability to work from home. For the last year before I quit, I had hope that my art practice would be something I would slowly nurture and eventually as it became a source of income would overtake my existing job. Instead I found that as the potential of my art became more apparent, so too the necessity of giving it my full attention. Each day became more and more difficult, until at some point working my job felt like trying to maintain a made up story that didn’t actually matter. When originally leading the creation of novel software that solved problems for people, it was fulfilling, but as the software matured and the focus became more detail and design oriented the feeling of making a difference dissipated.
Quitting also would mean living off of savings until I can get income established, and while I knew that it would need to happen sooner or later, the idea of saving just a bit more delayed the decision for some weeks. A breaking point was reached and I let my superiors know, and immediately felt a whole lot lighter. I had so much stress over this job and trying to find a way to balance it with the increasingly salient vision of a future in art, and all that was suddenly resolved by just accepting this is my path. That wasn’t the only stress at the time however, and if not for additional other stress I might have been better able to find that balance, but in this case it seems this was the best option.
Since I quit my job, I’ve been focusing on learning more GLSL and related math everyday. I’ve picked up several skills since, new smoothing functions, better lighting, better understanding of shadows, actually finally spent the time to learn how to deal with a camera matrix. The difference I hope to make is far more likely and possible now, and actually the best of what I believe I can contribute to the world. That is as mentioned in my first post, working on art that will serve an already beginning and growing science of consciousness. Finally going all in on all this has been the best thing I could have done, both for the development of my skills, and my mental health.