Finding Motivation Again
This blog will be about a few things.
It’s going to serve as a way to keep me motivated in programming. I’d like to share new things I’ve learned here and when I get comments perhaps have some discussion on things as well. I’m also going to use it to work through my thoughts, experiences, and the struggles that come with them.
So, I lost my father a little more than two months ago now. It feels strange writing out that sentence, something you think you would never have to deal with. We all know our parents will eventually die, and perhaps they would say things to you like “I won’t always be here”. In the moment though, something like that kind of seems so far and distant.
I’m a young-(ish) guy, 36 at the time of writing this, and it’s hard. I feel like he had so much more to teach me about life. There are things I still wanted to ask him, new things I wanted to do or experience with him, or tell him about my day and what I did, and that’s gone now.
We both work in the trucking industry, in fact we work at the same place and have the same hours, so I would see him every morning and sometimes at night if we got back at the same time. We often got overtime together too, like riding together to pick up another tractor.
He had done it for a lot of his life, and I decided in my twenties to become a truck driver as well. The money is good, it helped me buy my first house, but it’s completely unfulfilling. It can be physically demanding at times too, and mentally draining. Imagine working 8+ hours, getting out at the end of the day only to find there was an accident on your route you take home and it’s going to be another hour, sitting in traffic, before you can sit down with your partner and enjoy dinner and spending time together.
I remember having long discussions with my Dad, about life and what’s going on in mine during one of those hour long drives to grab a tractor to bring back. I told him how I was learning programming on my own, and how much I enjoy it.
I just remember him saying how proud he was of me, and how he wanted me to get out of trucking and do something better than he did. He would say he was an old man and he was stuck here, but I’m young and can do whatever I want. Even now, just thinking about it is painful. I remember when he got sick, I lost all my motivation to continue, and that has continued, and seems more profound now that he is gone.
I hope with this blog, and poking around with Astro, I can jump start the fun I had before. I think Dad would be proud of me for picking it back up.
Chris