A while ago I felt like I was losing my passion for programming, and had no interest in what I was doing. I thought that maybe tech is not for me after all, that maybe it’s time for a career pivot. I pondering on these feelings and thoughts some more and remembered my 2nd year of college staying up till 5 am working on a tex adventure game in C++ that was due in 3 weeks. I was never the student who submits their assignments early, yet somehow I felts compelled to stay up late and work on the assignment. I was fascinated with programming and the ability it gave me to create things. It was intoxicating, with just a laptop and an internet connection I could create, solve problems and be totally engaged and happy. I realized the reason I was losing my passion for programming is that I was trying to learn new and hot technologies rather than things that genuinely interested. I was trying to force my interests to match what is popular. There is no way I can stay up till 5 am working on forced interests.

I want the feeling of being completely engaged, in a state of flow, and I want to be naturally driven by genuine curiosity. I believe natural genuine curiosity is a perquisite to being great at any endeavour. However, curiosity on its own is not sufficient, it needs to be directed and channeled through a discipled system to yield fruitful results. One of the my favourite books is “so good they can’t ignore you” and in the book Cal Newport makes the point that a big part of enjoying something is actually becoming good at it through delibrete practice where you are constantly pushing yourself beyond you current abilities. I don’t believe am done with tech, nor do I believe I lost my interest in programming. I just need to follow my curiosity and practice deliberately.