Let’s begin with the obvious. I made no post last week. Not even a lazy quote like the week before it, nor even a tiny “Sorry I can’t really think of what to write” like the month before. Nothing. Nada. I had zero in me, because, for once, I’d written a part of a short-story earlier that day (which you might get to see, maybe…)
This could be the start of a slippery slope, because it meant that I remembered this week’s deadline 20 minutes after it had technically elapsed.
It also means, per our agreement, that I owe Adrianne a drink. Fair is fair.
Anyway here’s this weeks post. Its title’s a bit of a sham. I am at home, it’s true, but there’s little to say about that. I could write about my family, how I adore each of them; I could also write about Coleraine, and how I loathe it. But I think those are topics for another time.
Being at home makes me think. It might be my parents, who both encourage me to think just by being them, or maybe the prevelance of books, which there aren’t many of at Hub outside of a few spots. In any case I’ve been thinking about a lot.
Earlier this week my roommate asked me how good I thought I was at computers. I’d just been complaining about how unsuited some people in my course seem to be to the craft, and how easy the modules are. I said I reckoned I was pretty good, but he didn’t take that for an answer. He asked again, and told me to really be honest about how far I think I could go with my ability. So I took the question seriously, and after a few moments, I said “MIT. If I actually worked hard, I could make it to MIT, do a postgraduate program there.”
Some of you might think that’s a bit egotistic, and that might be true. But let’s assume I’m right. That if I pushed myself beyond what my fairly basic undergraduate modules asked of me, I could make it to Massachusetts some time in the next five years. Because as interesting as it was to find out that I think that highly of my abilities, a far more important revelation occurred to me later:
Would I want that?
During the summer I had a deep experience at a Christian youth festival called Summer Madness (which is responsible for many such moments in my life and faith to date). The realization I came away with was this – that I’m not sure I even like computers. In fact I became quite convinced that I didn’t, that I didn’t want to learn about them, work with them, have a career in them. To a boy who’d just completed a year of his Software Engineering degree, who’d acquired an apprenticeship that gave him life-changing financial support and opportunities, and who for the last four years had thought of doing nothing else… well it wasn’t a realization he wanted to have.
And that boy still doesn’t know what to do with it now that he has. Even moving past my uncertainty around what God speaks and what I myself think, I’m left with a paradox. Why have I been so drawn to computers, in my free-time, school, and now my higher education, if I don’t like them? Is there not some part of me that does like them? Which one? And what else, oh what else, am I to do with my life?
Originally I was going to leave you here, at the climax of my questioning, for dramatic effect, but I realized that may incur a lot of concerned texts. So don’t worry – I’m fine. Just because I don’t know where I’m going doesn’t mean I don’t love where I’m at, which I do. I don’t know what all this writing was for, or whom except myself it was for, but if you read it all, thanks. And if you too don’t really know where you want to be, or what you want at all, read Psalm 32:8. It’s a verse that hangs in my room. I don’t think I’ve ever not needed to read it.