Stubbornness

In a few hours, I fly to NYC to be reunited with my lovely wife after far too many days of separation. What God has put together let no man rend asunder. Very excited about it. I’ve been to NYC twice, but I’ve seen nearly nothing there. The biggest sites I’ve been to are Redeemer and Saint’s Alp.

Being alone has given me a little time to think, and not just about the hunger pangs that come from having zero cooking skills. I think the past couple weeks have helped me identify a few things about myself.

For one, I’m stubborn. I used to think I keep doing the things I’m doing out of inertia, but that’s only part of it. The other part is stubbornness. Somewhere inside, I have to prove to myself that I can succeed at whatever I do, even if what I’m doing is suboptimal and not an ideal fit for who I am. This sense that I need to prove that I can do something, anything, makes me persist in whatever suboptimal things I’m doing.

To be more specific, I think I’m not a programmer. I don’t know quite how to explain that exactly. It’s not (I hope) that I’m not intelligent enough, that I’m not good at it, or even that I don’t like doing it. It’s just not who I am. Looking at other engineers, you can tell who is and isn’t fundamentally a programmer, and I’m not. But I’ve persisted in it in large part because of stubbornness. The need to prove to myself that I can be a programmer. I could be an OK, maybe good programmer, but I think I could thrive doing something else. So long term, maybe even short term, it doesn’t make sense for me to persist in something that’s not the best fit for who I am.

This may seem obvious, but it was a revelation to me.