The Artist Who Accidentally Became an Engineer
I won’t beat around the bush. I’ve never thought of myself as a Software Developer who simply happens to play at being an Artist from time to time on the side.
I’ve always seen myself as an Artist.
The fact I happen to make my living as an engineer is a quirk of fate and necessity. Some would call it very lucky. And I suppose, for a while, I was indeed pretty lucky.
I’ve spent the bulk of my career attempting to do relatively few “engineer” things while still making a living as a software developer. I worked for myself #freelancing instead of as a full-time employee. I prioritized #RemoteWork rather than move to Silicon Valley or Seattle or New York or Austin. And I’ve avoided becoming entangled with Big Tech at all costs in favor of…well, virtually anyone else. I’ve had clients who are small businesses, non-profits, agencies partnered with local municipalities, bootstrapped startups, churches, museums, and schools.
Did I screw myself in the end?
Did I miss out big time in not casting my scruples aside and getting a string of high-paying jobby-jobs in Mountain View or Redmond or Round Rock?
Objectively, perhaps not. A lot of developers are struggling right now—I know this for a fact. I don’t think I’m uniquely in a difficult predicament.
And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other industries where the work itself might be rewarding but the “job” (aka everything else attached to the role) rather sucks.
Yet…apart from my work in open source such as the #Bridgetown web framework in Ruby, and a handful of truly wonderful projects I’ve been privileged to work on over the years, I can’t help but wonder if I’m reaching the end of the line, as it were. The longer I try to straddle the fence between Artist and Engineer, the more both may suffer.
My greatest fear is if I were to fully embrace the Engineer in me as a way to survive this terrible job market, I will lose the Artist forever.
Yet the opposite is also scary: if I were to embrace the Artist as a way to live fully true to myself, I will lose nearly everything else by sliding into poverty.
I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but the truth is I’ve lived most of my life with some kind of active tension between these two poles, and with everything going on in the world right now, that tension feels like it’s ratcheting up to the point of breaking utterly.
I fear The Snap. 😱
And that, more than anything, is a source of genuine existential dread for me right now. I’ve managed to get by for a very long time without compromising my values too much. I may not have much in the way of monetary assets, but I sleep well at night.
I wonder if I’m no longer afforded that luxury.
The struggle is real.
P.S. The rumors are true: I’m available for hire! 😅
