It is exceptionally hard to stop doing something you used to love
In order to understand my situation, I need to give a bit of context.
I discovered web development back when I was sixteen thanks to a teacher and I’ve been trying to improve my skills since then.
After finishing my studies four years later, I got a job offer from the same company I had done my intership in. My tasks where simple, I just had to implement analytics on our websites, have a custom dashboard displaying data and figure out a way to display dynamic images based on user interaction.
Due to only working six hours a day and a lack of professional improvement, I decided to quit my job after a year and accept an offer I got. This time I would work full time in a team.
I’ve been in the same company for three plus years with our ups and downs and I don’t plan on changing that.
I consider myself as a curious programmer
Aren’t all programmers supposed to be curious and constantly learning?
You’d be surprised.
After work, I spend a couple hours a day developing projects, brainstorming ideas and learning new things, mostly web dev, but I’ve never turned down an oportunity to learn about other tech fields.
So… where does this go wrong?
Passion can quickly become an obsession.
I used to spend most of my week programming and weekends were disconnect days. I used to Game, watch some films, etc…
For some reason I stopped enjoying my weekends and started programming aswell. All of a sudden, I had no real free time and it would bother me if I had to do something else other than programming.
After almost two years in that state, I’ve come to an overwelming conclusion. Programming at home feels like a chore.
I thought this feeling was because I was using the same exact stack and tools I use at work, so I tryied changing that for my side projects. Changing PHP for GO felt intelligent. But it only made the problem worse.
I would like to change the direction for my side projects because I feel my passion for this field keeps growing by the day.
After some thinking and tinkering with various different programming fields. I found Embedded systems to be extremelly fun. But maybe it’s just because its new to me.