> I am really really good (perhaps top 10 or so worldwide) at one thing, and pretty good at a couple other things. If I didn't have that, I think I would feel utterly worthless in 2019.
With the internet, our kind of global culture and the kind of "attention economy" that we have, there is a bit of a culture where if you're not the best at something, and the first to do it, you're irrelevant. The world has changed, and so have we. A lot of the people leading the tech field today were kids in the 1980s and 1990s, just playing with computers for fun. In the pre-internet days, you couldn't just publish code online and immediately get a lot of attention for it. Sure, you'd be proud of yourself if you did something cool, but showing people might involve getting someone to come to your house.
I struggle with this too. When I work on a personal project, I want it to have impact, to be world class if possible. That creates pressure. I sometimes forget to just try and have fun. Over a year ago, I had to abandon my main open source project because it was reaching about 8 regular contributors, and just reviewing pull requests after coming home from work felt like another job on top of my job and I was like... Fuck no, I can't do this, when I come home from work, I actually need to rest and have a life of my own.
With the internet, our kind of global culture and the kind of "attention economy" that we have, there is a bit of a culture where if you're not the best at something, and the first to do it, you're irrelevant. The world has changed, and so have we. A lot of the people leading the tech field today were kids in the 1980s and 1990s, just playing with computers for fun. In the pre-internet days, you couldn't just publish code online and immediately get a lot of attention for it. Sure, you'd be proud of yourself if you did something cool, but showing people might involve getting someone to come to your house.
I struggle with this too. When I work on a personal project, I want it to have impact, to be world class if possible. That creates pressure. I sometimes forget to just try and have fun. Over a year ago, I had to abandon my main open source project because it was reaching about 8 regular contributors, and just reviewing pull requests after coming home from work felt like another job on top of my job and I was like... Fuck no, I can't do this, when I come home from work, I actually need to rest and have a life of my own.