The Long Drive
19 Jan 2009Long drives by yourself I have to think are inherently bad. You’re just stuck there; trapped in a metal box. Very quickly you find yourself running out of things to do.
Thus was my case this morning. You see, what appears to be a group of homeless people “accidentally” set one of our major bridges on fire this weekend. So now that bridge is closed. So now all of that traffic (80,000 cars a day), well, it has to go somewhere else.
I discovered this morning that all of that traffic has apparently decided to divert itself to my bridge. Unfortunately, my bridge is already pretty much at capacity.
So on this long drive I listened to an Audiobook for a while. A little over an hour. I listened to the radio for a bit. I flipped through a mapbook looking for an alternative route. Then, well then I was tired of those things and I ran out of things to do. At first I got frustrated, then I got calm, finally I got bored again.
I find it is always at these moments that I start asking myself, what do I really want to do?
That is both a fundamental and an epic question. We all ask ourselves that from time to time. Sometimes in the context of what do I want to watch on TV next? What do I want for supper? Once in a while though it is in that grander epic sense of “What do I want to do with my life?”
I know for certain, that sitting in a car for up to three hours a day travelling one way to work definitely isn’t it. So what is it? Good question.
I like a lot of things. I have a lot of interest. Most of them involve some form or other of data manipulation. I like to chart things and organize things. I like to write code that does useful stuff. Yes, stuff. I really can’t get much clearer than that.
In a perfect world I would be able to work from home completely on my own schedule.
On the flip side, in these times of economic turmoil; I am happy just to have a job. Almost 300 game developers in Vancouver alone have been let go in the last couple of weeks.