Background textures of work An Article by Lucy Keer lucykeer.com One thing I've been enjoying about working as a technical writer is that the minute-by-minute texture of the work feels right. Something about formatting text, faffing about with SVGs, trying to rewrite a sentence more clearly... it's just enjoyable in itself, and I feel at home with it. ...Working as a programmer was very much not like that. There's something in the rough vicinity of professional dev work that I do like, which I could probably label as 'iterative hobbyist tinkering with websites'. I like working on something with a strong visual component, and I like to be inside of a fast feedback loop, and I'm mostly interested in just somehow bodging through until it works. I'm not very interested in either the computer-sciencey side of programming — data structures, algorithms — or the software-engineerey side of making things run reliably at scale in a maintainable way. So maybe it's not surprising that the minute-by-minute texture of professional programming was just... kind of bad. Occasional fun bits when I got into something, but the background experience was not fun. workproductivitymaking
Brave New World A Novel by Aldous Huxley A man who dreams of fewer thingsBetween desire and its consummationEnding is better than mendingI am I, and wish I wasn’tSubjected to some great trial+1 More
A man who dreams of fewer things “He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.” “A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth.” philosophydreams
Between desire and its consummation Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. emotiondesire
Ending is better than mending “We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better…” noveltyrepairtrashwastemelancholyending
Subjected to some great trial Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as a week ago, in the Director’s office, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. Prometheus painsuffering