ERROR 404 NOT FOUND

Seeing your long-time loved ones after a while can trigger emotions you never knew you had, never knew you were building up. Seeing my undergrad friend reminded me of what true love is. (Remove your mind from the gutter, you there.)

He mentioned during one of our conversations that I should put my talent in language and communication to better use. I never thought of it that way, still don't. But he’s amongst those who’ve had me convinced that I’m good enough to at least give it a go. That and a state of high coupled with me coming across an article convincing me to give this a go has brought me here: Me putting in a genuine effort into writing blogs.

I have not yet thought this out. Is this going to be a diary, is this going to be a flow of thoughts, ideas? For now, I’m going to keep it as a combination of things, my mind basically flowing through its stream. I might write separate idea articles as well, but I’ll give it a thought later. So here we go.

As for the topic of the article, any person in tech worth their salt knows this dreaded error. It’s if you basically can’t find the resource requested for. That’s pretty well been my rather tumultuous relationship with computer science and software dev. Despite the 6 years of education along with a couple jobs, I can't yet find the passion for the field or subjects in question. I’ve felt this way for years and this has also been a trigger multiple times for my mental breakdown, but I’ve also become pretty good at it. Not world class, but pretty good. Solid would be the right word I suppose. So, I'm in this sticky situation of being pretty good at something I absolutely have no interest or passion in.

I’ve had this impostor syndrome for years now. Do I truly belong doing software development? Am I really in over my head trying to bring down the time complexity of an algo to linear time? Am I truly happy coding away for hours when only a few years ago tears streamed down cheeks trying to teach dumb me Java and C++? What the fuck am I even doing here?

I’ve for the longest time thought of myself as alone. Alone in my griefs, alone in my problems. Not out of vanity, but out of feeling out of place. If I've learnt anything over the years dealing with grief (more on this in another article maybe), it has a way of ostracizing you from the world. You lock yourself up in a self-imposed and sentenced prison. For the better part of this decade, I’ve watched people pour over their computer screens punching away code, memorizing design patterns and in between all of that I also saw passion in the eyes of quite a few. A burning flame to truly solve a problem posed. A desire to optimize their code and come with the cleanest possible solution. I’d stare away in envy, self-hate and pity at their competence and my lack thereof. But over the years I convinced myself that I hate the subject because I'm not good at it, the total opposite of what I figure is the truth and what I truly believed at the start.

So maybe now, I’m in a state of Stockholm Syndrome with my career. Because for the most part, I'm fine with the status quo. It's not that I love what I'm doing, but I've learnt to find interest in bursts. I'll be mildly interested or humoured by something for a couple months at most and once again, I'm back in this state of hollowness, emptiness. But this genuine apathy I've developed to my status quo is what strikes me and once I open the can of worms, it gets messy.

This has officially led me to constantly second guess my true passion and interest: physics. Until a few years back, I’d proudly beat my chest at how much I loved Physics and how good I was and still could be at it. I’d very passionately regularly read articles and understood (or thought) a decent amount of the concepts despite being out of touch with it educationally. I discussed these topics with a couple friends, read blogs, journals, papers and watched videos. I was never truly away from Physics, I was just “out of phase” with it. (Please somebody get it) But today, I am not so sure. I think of all the things I studied and all the things I found hard. I am put down by the number of students who were better at it during my IIT education days. I feel small thinking of how abysmally my exam performances went despite my strength in said subject. I am left daunted by how out of sync I am with the subject and how much I’ll need to catch up with it to be able to even consider a future career in it. Today I am left wondering if I truly love the subject, if I truly am good at it or just think I am good at it, or if the truth is a mix of both? I do not know, and that makes me mad, scared and angry. The lack of conviction hurts my confidence, it makes me second guess myself.

Do I truly know who I am, or have I made an elaborate mask that I’ve forgotten exists? Do I even truly know what I like or am I just a stitched version of other's projections of me?

I’m not writing this to answer this question, because hell I’ve been grappling with this question awhile. I’m not expecting closure, what I am expecting is some self-reflection and catharsis. To finally give voice to something that has been screaming in my head for nearly a decade, that has been crying out for help.

There is a very high possibility that I shall remain in Software all my career, and that thought scares me. There is also the possibility that I fall in love with my work, or maybe I learn how to keep my passion alive and have it cocooned away from the world and separated from my job. I do not have the answers. All I have is questions, but I realize the need to give voice to these thoughts. Give them words, not to let this beating heart in my mind flatline. The day that voice flatlines, is all hope truly lost. Until I have these answers, my answers to the million questions in my head and my lifelong search for my passion shall be “Error 404 Not Found”.

Quick PS - Blame the weed and music (Linkin Park, Greenday, Breaking Benjamin) and the fucking youtube algorithm. Played some rather amazing tunes and got the creative juice flowing, albeit a little melodramatically.