Reboot
What happens when you commit to making things work
I started posting awhile ago with mixed feelings. I pivoted, paused, restarted, and finally shelved the project. I think I was writing for the wrong reasons before as I tried to resemble what gets clicks in technical spaces. I’m going to give this another shot, but this time I’m writing for myself. I don’t know if it will be different this time, but I’m willing to find out.
This reboot is to start a conversation about what making technical things can teach us about ourselves. Taking responsibility for delivering sucks, but the alternative is worse. I wouldn’t trade the frustration I feel wrestling with gory details for the anxiety of constantly justifying my existence in a world where I don’t actually produce anything.
I’m writing to you, the doer who often feels unseen and misunderstood in a world full of thinkers. The irony of writing about doing isn’t lost on me, but my goal isn’t to convince you to do things. I’m here to reflect on what doing hard things has done to me, and I hope it’s valuable for you.
I make a living getting technical things to work. If you ask me what I do, I might say I’m a data scientist or machine learning engineer. Some days, “I work in tech” is all I can muster when I’m feeling extra frothy. Truthfully, I just make stuff and I’m expected to figure things out when it doesn’t go as expected. No one is coming to save me when I get stuck. Thankfully, most problems have some kind of solution, it’s just a matter of how much we’re willing to pay for it.
As makers, we pay for it with time, attention, and the emotional toll that comes with forcing something into existence. It could be automating an analysis, scaling a process, or connecting components that were never designed to work together. Along the way, we learn something about ourselves and the world we’re building. The trick is showing up to do that over and over. I’ll be back shortly to say more on this.
Keep those capable hands dirty.
Josh
In the immortal words of DMX:
‘Love to the wild, wild hunnids (yeah)
Shout out to n*s that done it (come on)
And it ain't even about the dough (uh, uh, uh)
It's about gettin' down for what you stand for, yo, fo real’
Fo real indeed.
Hey, glad to see this email today - I was having beverages with Mike Tzen last night, your name came up. Is it really a world full of thinkers, or just a world full of talkers? Anyways, we should catch up some time. Hang in there.