I’ve been reading a lot of random stuff online lately, even more so than my usual diet of NY Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Slate (all on LeechBlock, btw). A bunch of my friends write blogs, plus there are those random links people send out or have in their gchat status. Reading these sometimes, I’m jealous – not of the career of the escort in New York who blogs about her clients, but more of the writers themselves, that they support themselves through writing, or that they have the time to maintain a blog. That they get to write regularly, about interesting things; that they get to write fiction. My friend Lina writes a beautiful blog, and I often wish I could do the same thing.
On the other hand, I’m reminded of Lawrence’s response to Peter’s dream of doing nothing in Office Space: “You don’t need a million bucks to do nothing. Take a look at my cousin, he’s broke, don’t do shit.” If I want to write, I can just write. It’s true that it takes time and energy, but it doesn’t take money or even any more education than I already have. I could take a class just to have the motivation to complete assignments, I suppose. Or look for writer’s workshops to join.
But this very career I’ve chosen, as far away it is from my love of reading and writing, is quite satisfying, and there’s no guarantee I would actually like being a journalist, or a freelance writer, or even a novelist. For one thing, it’s rare to make any money, and after years of grad school and postdocs, I’m a little tired of being poor. Moreover, money is a kind of proxy for recognition; I can’t imagine the frustration of putting tons of time and effort into a piece of work only to have it rejected over and over again. And perhaps most importantly, I know that my happiness is very driven by how productive I feel. I would have to be entirely self-motivated to write, without even the outside pressure of conference deadlines or DARPA site visits. Even Lina struggled with writer’s block. This was essentially why I decided to be a math major instead of an English major in college.
It’s sort of absurd that it took me 6.5 years of a PhD and 2+ more of a postdoc to decide that I actually like computer science research, that it’s engaging and fun, that I more often want to go to work than not, that it gives me a lot of freedom to keep learning about lots of different things and allows me to exchange interesting ideas with the smartest people in the world, not to mention that I get to read and write all the time and that my love of it makes me good at my job as a researcher. I’m even productive, most of the time.
Also, I get sent to places like this for important work meetings:
