Nobody Can Live In The Theatre

Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by the theatre. I think it has something to do with the fact that everything is, by necessity, so much bigger when it's on stage. Everything is larger than life because, let's face it, nobody wants to see a husband and wife fight. But throw it on stage, blow it up so it's larger than life, and suddenly it's interesting and artistic. When we expand things to larger-than-lifesize like that, they start incorporating literary elements, they start showing us things about ourselves. We cling to the cliches and archetypes and caricatures because they're convenient and easily recognisable, and because they are organic representations of the things we see in each other and ourselves. They're relatable.

I've always wanted to live in a theatre. I've always wanted everything to be larger than life, always wanted things to mean nothing or everything. There would never be a dull moment, right?

The problem with living in a theatre is that the people don't scale. The people around you are people, not cliches or archetypes or caricatures. And endless monologues are lonely things to give.

It's been a while since I wrote here last. A month, almost.

I've been keeping myself busy. I launched a defective product, I spent a bunch of time providing bug fixes for it, I took on contracts for clients, I worked and worked and worked. And you know what?

I'm seeing little reward from it.

That is purposefully disingenuous. I am being paid quite well, have wonderful relationships with my clients, and have somehow risen to the enviable position of turning down work I never sought in the first place. Kevin Purdy, of Lifehacker and Complete Android renown, and other well-connected friends and acquaintances in Buffalo keep pushing contracts and jobs towards me. I am, in a certain sense, being rewarded handsomely for my "work". But in the sense that matters most to me, my sense of accomplishment and quality of life, my high water mark for my emotions... in these places, I seem to be falling short, stagnating.

Part of the problem is that, since August, I've been embroiled in the part of being a programmer I hate the most: maintenance and revision. Part of what I love about programming is the high, the sense of freedom, the grandiose visions that starting a new project grant you. I haven't felt that, in all honesty, since August, not counting a brief moment of insanity here and there. Part of this, ironically, is the fault of my own success; a project that was started without that high, sans those grandiose visions, actually took off and began fulfilling some of the ones I would have had. Kevin, again, is to thank for that. In essence, all the problems in my life right now boil down to "It's pretty much Kevin's fault." I kid. Sort of.

I want to be working on something new. I have lots of ideas. I have lots of exciting technologies to play with, lots of interesting people to talk with, lots of encouragement. The only thing I truly lack is time.

I return to school in a week. I have yet to write the papers or read the books I need to have read by then. I've yet to start. Hell, I still haven't registered for classes. How can I already have no time to do this stuff, and be losing vast amounts of my day shortly? That's just not fair.

In roughly 12 hours, I'll be meeting with my doctor for a variety of reasons, mainly to get refills on my dextroamp-amphetamine, the federally controlled pills that let me have an attention span longer than--- ooh, kitty. But I also plan to broach the whole "sleep disorder" thing then, because I feel like that's where a lot of my time goes. If I could rid myself of that nasty compulsion, the unnerving need to go into a coma every day for a third of the day, I think I'd be a much more productive person.

I feel kind of fucked by Google. And that's totally not ok of me.

See, I was blessed by Google. I was one of ten people outside of the company given super-early access to their awesome new Channel API way back in October-ish. At the time, they gave access to my development server for android2cloud, to load-test the service and figure out how it works under load. They said they'd be expanding the test server numbers to check and see how more and more user load affected the server as time went on. That's totally reasonable, and I was lucky to get what they gave me. Because I'm a greedy little bastard, I asked that the production server be considered for the larger tests, and was given an assurance that it was "exactly the kind of environment [they'd] want" when the time came.

So I faithfully ported android2cloud, tried to work out the kinks in the system, tried to help out the other developers who were gifted with this early access. And we heard very little about the roadmap and schedule of the testing. So, we moved along. I had to stop working with the Channel API after a while, and pick up nodejs, to try and get a patch for my server issues out the door as soon as possible. And that's where I was, when I saw the TechCrunch post today.

After that, I saw the App Engine blog post.

The impression I get from both posts is that Channels are available in all App Engine apps now. Which leaves me a little hurt and upset, and I'm simultaneously hoping that it is true and not true. I want my server problems to go away, and this gives me a huge amount of breathing room. But I also wanted to get some load testing metrics, get some idea of how this would actually work with our system, have some forewarning so I could handle this gracefully and smoothly. Finding out through a third party, then hearing about it on the official blog, and not even getting a similar announcement in the mailing list is kind of a slap, after everything. And I posted links to both posts on the mailing list, and asked if this meant the Channel API was available to everyone now. Nobody has clarified yet.

And then I think about everything that's happened, and this saga as a whole. And I feel like an ungrateful little shit, because the company that did so much for me and made such exceptions for me didn't remember to give me forewarning before launching the feature I had been testing for them, as a favour to me. If they even launched the service, which I'm still unclear on.

I know I've written a lot about my indecision as to the future I'm walking towards, the path I'm putting myself on. I know I'm looking between software and teaching, and weighing my two loves, trying to decide which to pursue.

I was recently listening to the comedian Bo Burnham on YouTube (the guy is great, I highly recommend listening to a few of his songs. Vulgar, but true.) One of his tracks stuck out like a sore thumb, struck a chord in me. I've embedded it below.



See, I view my programming as art. There is an art to making cool things. In fact, I would posit that making cool things is, by definition, art. The question that I'm posing is whether that is something we should aspire to or not.

The literacy rates and graduation rates in my country, one of the wealthiest places in the world, the place that brings us Facebook and Twitter, are abysmal. They're so bad, I wouldn't be surprised if many adults were unsure as to what "abysmal" means. And yet, we're coming up with new and interesting ways to communicate with each other. We're employing some of the smartest minds in creating art. And while we have a need to nurture the inner artist, we need to remember that that inner artist exists in a world. We can't simply hold art up as an excuse, some lofty goal that we aspire to with no regard for the context around it. There are rumbles of dissent around Buffalo right now because the funding for the arts was drastically cut, but... we're in a financially difficult spot right now. Should we be cutting funding to the arts to support more immediately pressing concerns?

It's hard to open a mind that is rotting because it was starved to death. It's hard to light a spark in someone who was beaten for being different. Maybe art shouldn't be our highest concern.

I'm not sure on any of this. I'm just thinking about where art stands in our society, and the benefits it attributes to our society. Are they equal? Is there a separation of benefits to a society, two categories of necessity? The necessity for intellectual growth and expansion through art, and the necessity for basic survival? Should we be pursuing them in tandem? As a software programmer, am I doing a disservice by turning my code into art, by delaying the good that I could be doing for my society by insisting on doing it in this pure way?

I am an artist; please, God, forgive me.

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

This quote has stuck with me for a few years. Ever since I first heard it, as a leader in Vacation Bible School, it has remained lodged in my mind, taking up permanent residence there next to quotes about passion and excellence and pithy song lyrics. I think it has resonated with me so strongly because giving responsibility begets responsible behaviour, in my experience. Peter is the rock; he is given the weight of the entire Church, an Atlas of the theological world of Christ, but he's also given the strength and stability of a rock.

Perhaps the cure of my ills is the hair of the dog that bit me. Perhaps I need to be more of a Peter, not less.

I'm kind of really excited. I'm working with a friend to launch Second Bit, LLC, a software company. It's going to serve as an incubator for my random application and website ideas, and they will be released under that banner. I will also be taking on some freelance work under that banner. Look out for my stuff in the future.

I'm not sure what it is about formalising this as a company that excites me so much. I guess I've always had a weakness for official, important-feeling things. Filing for an LLC with the State of New York definitely fits that bill. Is this just another shallowness of my character, another weakness to be accounted for, this need for that feeling of importance?