I’m beginning to understand more and more why… well, why I’m not understood.
I may be so bold as to include all geeks in here, and I’ll use that wording,
but I am not going to try to speak for anyone but myself (though I do think
that it’s true…).
People don’t seem to understand us at all. How we work, how we function, what
we feed off of. Why can’t people just get that as a geek I enjoy
work. Not work as in stuff that sucks, but….
I think that’s it.
To “normal” people, work is what they do when they go to the office at 8am,
and don’t do at 5pm when they get home. A dentist or doctor doesn’t bring his
stuff home with him, and an iron worker or miner I’m guessing don’t bring
their work home. Geeks on the other hand, go to work and
hack/code/tweak/modify/play, then come home, and continue on with the same
type of thing. It’s because the geek culture is one where we have the unique
ability to have a job where they pay us to do the things we do anyway. Not
exactly the same… I took a sick day today and spent the majority of it
playing Deus Ex. Same actions though,
sitting in front of the computer and doing, experimenting, fixing, breaking,
taking apart and examining. Now it’s 11pm and what am I doing? Sitting in
front of my code from work and tracking down a bad-ass segfault in
init_attacks(). Experiment, break, examine farther. Sound familiar?
So because I enjoy “work”. Like I said, not work that sucks, but work that is
fun. And strange as it sounds to the outside world and normal people,
tracking down segfaults is fun. I’d explain more, but I have to fall
back to an old adage from a climbing book: “The resons, whenever stated,
never sound quite right, and only matter to nonclimbers anyway.”. Turn that
“nonclimbers” to “non-geeks” and you’ve got it.
Anyway, all I want to know is why can’t people understand that my idea of a
“fun day” may consist of sitting and coding be it for work or one of my own
personal projects. Sometimes I have no problem being alone. Hell, I enjoy it
a lot of times, and wish I had less face time… just a weekend with
no people, calls or human interaction. Let my batteries
recharge or something. I guess some people work the opposite, they can’t
stand being alone and need to “recharge” by being around people. I guess
everyone is wired differently.