At times it's good to look back and see how much you have changed. A decade ago if someone had told me it takes a decade to get good at something or even to learn something, I'd have looked for something else to do, not believed you, or would have tried to look for shortcuts. Lived experience has shown that a decade is not that long and in the end you always wish you had just stuck with something you didn't. Mostly because you see how far I would have come if I had actually stuck with something. At the same time those experiences were necessary for me to understand this simple yet difficult wisdom of time under tension. Deliberate practice is hard. You are operating in the zone of discomfort. It's called so for a reason. It's also taught me that there are only so many things you can do in your life and do them well. Even fewer that you will master.
It's been about five years since I decided it would be programming. Mostly because I could see that there was so much to learn and even more so because you did not need anyone's permission to get better. You can just decide and follow through and in time you will have learned the thing. Zero permission necessary. I bring it up because I came across this post on Hacker News today. There is a lot for me to get better at. Most importantly I'm finding myself just as motivated if not more than I was five years ago. Sure there were moments during this period where I wasn't at all. But my north star has always been to master the craft of programming. The times I felt the worst were the times where I had derailed from that path. No amount of holidays or breaks could replace the need to put arse in chair and chase my curiosity.
I'll be candid. One of my biggest challenges right now is to tackle an unknown problem on my own. Somewhere I came across a comment by someone who had the same problem. He also mentioned how HandmadeHero helped him overcome it. It's about 1000 hours but I've decided to go through it. Maybe not all of it but just enough to get me going. It also feels like a valid next step to write a game from scratch. Should be fun.
My prime curiosity that drives me is the question, "What does it feel like to master something?" It's a question I'd like answered, plus it gives me something to do with my time. Life can feel long without it. Ironically it feels too short to learn everything while pursuing something like mastery.