Escape Characters

You are not that great

Windchill is a very real phenomenon. I can verify this, skating around Westchester Lagoon after dark as fast as I can without much but my coat collar to protect my face. Snot and tears stream like I was mourning uncontrollably, but I'm actually enjoying myself. My reluctant rollerblading all those years never quite matched up to the speed and agility I felt on ice. Then again, it wasn't this cold. But, given an expansive surface and no small children to dodge, this is the kind of exercise I can always enjoy.

I'm thinking about a kid I once knew that rode the same bus I did. Actually, being that we rode the same bus for elementary, middle, and highschool, I'd go so far as to say we knew each other pretty well. We even played hockey together for some years, even with his father coaching our team for a number of them before I quit. We weren't great friends, really, because we both had different circles, and neither's opposite circle much cared for the other. No matter: just about every morning at the bus stop, both of us would get there about ten minutes early. And talk about video games before the other kids would get there and deem us the geeks we were. Eventually as we got older, and thus became the ruling class at the back of the bus, we stopped caring, and spent our twenty minute rides to and fro talking about the latest releases of anything and everything electronic. He would wax on about how his Dreamcast was a superior technology to that of the Playstation, and I would try to advise him on how to get started with Napster. A more innocent time, by any consideration.

I quit hockey before ninth grade for philosophical reasons. Specifically: I don't hold the philosophy that hurting other players is a viable strategy. I considered myself a decent player, not anything spectacular, but competent for how long I'd played, and with my entrance into the first few years of a full-contact league, realized that it was all for naught in light of this new and violent strategy. Additionally, it was no longer the cool thing to do, if it ever was. None of my friends were really interested in it, tending instead to Starcraft, Warhammer, or high school football. Myself, somewhat caught between all of these things, sort of went off the map in the meanwhile, having recently discovered programming and my odd fondness towards it. Friends in later years asked what I was doing when they were all playing Warhammer, to which I told them I was figuring out the beginnings of idkfa. Then, following that "summer of code," and continuing my lockstep habit in making strange decisions regarding hobbies, immediately joined ranks with my more sporting of friends on the high school junior varsity football team.

Which I hated, with a passion, and still do to this day. Hate, being the kinder term engendered only after years' times have passed. Having already left a sport due to its violent nature, I shudder at my logic as to why I would subsequently join football. I, quite literally, never understood the game, and given my aforementioned philosophy, couldn't stop an opposite team member to save my life. I can only hope that my time spent was like being a tragic but comic sidekick character in those sport movies I dislike. A hope potentially corroborated by the fact that the referees, intended to be impartial judges in our games, chuckled at me and asked, almost exhausted themselves at witnessing my struggle, "Why you breathing so hard, son?" It couldn't have been more ironic that I was playing on the field right next to the forsaken hockey rinks in which I had spent so much time in previous years. Thinking back, I didn't have time to appreciate it, as we were losing, and it was mostly our fault.

Strangely, I never played or practiced on this lagoon when I was younger. Probably too many people on weekends, not enough light at night. In fact, it's pretty dangerous at night, come to think of it. I can't really see the ice beneath me, which, while hot-mopped, is still riddled with pressure cracks. If I caught my skate the wrong way, or if I decided to stop on a crack, I could pretty easily break my ankle, or whatever else I happened to fall on. I perform a hockey stop anyways. One of the few things I can hold as a trophy from the hockey days. That and a tweaked back, but that's another story.

I think about this kid because of one of the last things he said to me. At this point, both of us had quit hockey, probably sometime near graduation, and were talking about our time playing hockey together. Mind you, this was a very brief part of the conversation, as most conversations with this guy quickly derailed to that of video games or other nerdery. The author notes that this may be the same in speaking with the author, but holds some pride in the self-realization. I was mostly curious about how hockey had gone in the years after I'd quit. Somehow it turned around to him claiming that I wasn't very good when I was playing. He said that most of our teammates disliked me as a player, citing that I was too slow, my puck-handling too clumsy, and my aim completely off. I was, essentially, "that kid," the one they humored while their superior skills somehow carried the team despite my deficiencies.

I'm usually one to take criticism poorly. I'm of the opinion that there isn't necessarily bad criticism, just some you need to take with more salt than others. I was taken aback by this particular guy's criticism, especially considering I always sort of thought of this guy in the same way, with about the same criticisms. Taken so aback that I'm still pondering it these couple years later, though in a decidedly different context.

I consider myself to be a decent programmer. Perhaps my time invested programming in my early days instead of painting pewter figures was well spent. Actually, I consider myself to be a damned good programmer. At eight months out from my formal education, I took the lead developer position on a project that was reduced from twenty people, to ten, then down to four, and eventually two in its darkest moments, with my alternate being otherwise heavily tasked with her own projects, and still managed to keep my head above water. But just barely, and at extreme cost to my pride in my work, my quality of work, and my overall happiness. I fell victim to what all programmers fear and at some point are required to experience (by virtue of the nature of their profession): burnout. The process by which good programmers are systematically deprived of what makes programming attractive, only to be replaced by what makes programming a terror.

Today, skimming across near-frictionless surfaces, I am, hopefully, days away from accepting a new job. A new job in the same field, of course, but doing something completely different, of which I've had almost no experience professionally. More specifically: it is not programming, or at least not the likes of which I have been doing for the past eight or so years. And, being so different, and the change so abrupt, my mind can't but help draw an analogy. Is this change the result of the same fickle, flawed logic that decided to show up for football after spending a summer sitting in front of a computer? Have all my friends moved on to their careers or pursuit thereof, leaving my strange computer obsession no longer a subject of interest? Or do I have a habit of quitting things when I think I'm at my best? Or do I just think I'm at my best, simply humored for all my toils, and all the gladder to be rid so the rest of the team can pick up the slack?

I guess I'll know in a couple of years.