I feel lost

When I was little, I had set my sights on the future. The really far future.

I grew up hearing the stories of the impossible. Those that tried to remove the things my 5-year-old brain thought about.

I was always brought to school by car. Sitting in the back seat of my parent's car, talking to my dad about how long it took to school. I told him that when I got older, I would be the one to invent the teleporter. He told me about those that tried before me and how the task is impossible. I listened to why it was impossible, then tried anyway. And failed, of course... I was 5 after all.

I remember asking my parents, "why we can't go forward or backwards in time to solve the problems of today"? I talked to my dad about time travel. He taught me about Einstein and his theory of relativity in turn. He told me exactly we wrote down about the universe, and how science was conducted. That there are more people working on creating the time machine, but currently it seemed impossible. I listened to why it was impossible, then tried anyway. And failed, of course. I was still only 5 years old.

But each project taught me things. I was 5, but I learned about the speed of light, about how energy moved. I put things in my cranium I didn't think would fit there. Yet, I learned. Day by day I learned.

Then I got a little older. Sitting in the back seat of my parent's car. Talking to my dad about the Oculus Rift DK 1. His coworker had one, and me and my little brother got to try it out. It was awesome! Seeing the game I loved so much in virtual reality, through those lenses, seemed so real. It was incredible. Watching the world in perspective. I asked him if we could get one. He said no, I was only 10, those kits weren't free. So, he told me to build one. And I did. At 10 years old, I built the first project I was genuinely proud of. That was truly mine. With some cardboard, a small HDMI screen, and an air-mouse, I built my first VR goggles from scratch. It was an incredible feeling. Just botching together things until it worked.

But, it kind of didn't. The air-mouse only allowed me to look up and down. Full 3D translational movements obviously didn't work. The Oculus Rift had way more sophisticated tracking than a simple air mouse.

Yet, I built a set of VR goggles. I proudly showed it at school at the yearly presentations. I got a few pats on the back, but it seemed the rest simply didn't care for my achievements.

Then years passed. Slowly, my desire for projects grew smaller. The teleporter and time machine seemed so far away.

I moved on from making VR goggles to hosting my own minecraft server using a little Ubuntu server. A 12-year-old learning how to control a headless Linux server on his Windows PC using PuTTY. Though, it didn't impress my friends either. They were happy that they could play on my server together. But I kept hoping for some kind of validation. The fact I was using these tools or had a mastery over them didn't seem to matter to them.

Then I built my own RGB controller. Before Philips Hue had been a thing and smart homes were cool. I created a circuit to control a LED strip at 2 amps. Manually controlling the RGB values with a little http server I also wrote. At 14, I created my own circuitry, front end and backend. I could control it using my phone. But still, none of this was impressive enough to even get my friends any interest in my work.

Now, each day I feel like I'm losing touch of projects. I keep starting and wanting to build more things. I want to build that time machine I used to dream of. Or the teleporter to remove commuting for the rest of my life.

But every project feels smaller, easier, and more and more useless. It hurts. I don't know any direction to step in any more. To impress others, I have to do the impossible, and to impress myself, I need to impress someone. Most projects I work on depress me these days.

I've always been a fan of free, collaborative open-source work. Watching people come together to create the best solution for a problem warms my heart. But in that part of my heart is a piece that hurts.

The best solutions aren't used. There are success stories, of course, of Krita and Blender. But, Spotify, Netflix, YouTube and Philips Hue still outshine any other open-source alternative. Even if the technology is inferior. As long as it's easier to use, it'll rack in users.

You can't simply switch to anything else because everyone is already on the big ones. Good luck trying to convince your friend who never dabbled in the open-source software and only knows how to make an account with the same username and password to use [Matrix]. Good luck trying to convince your ISP to support IPv6. Good luck trying to convince anyone to reach out and say, "Wow! I think it's incredible you built this technology for free. Let me reward you for your work".

I still crave to build things that, from a technological standpoint, are better. Faster. Use less cycles. Run cooler. Are cooler! But I feel like each step I take wants me to build something I don't want.

It's either, go into open source and don't get paid, or go make something I don't like. I don't like keeping my work a secret. "Don't let anyone know how you did it! Exploit it!". That is the part that pains me about working closed source. I want the tech that I make to help everyone. My friends, my parents, my partners. I don't want to go to them and tell them "I built this, but I'll only allow you to use it/know how I did it if you pay me".

Now, I feel lost. I don't know where to go to get the praise for the projects I've always wanted. I don't know whom to talk to get the words "That's awesome, Let me help you".

It's left me wondering if I still even want to pursue computer science. The science I've always had great pleasure for. The magic of talking to a brick, and making it do something that helps real people. Me included. Maybe I won't build time machines, I've delved enough into them and learnt enough to let that dream slide. I probably won't build that teleported. I know enough about physics now that if I would spiral into delusion if I were to try to defy the speed of light.

But there are glimpses of that childish wonder that run into me at times. Hearing news of quantum mechanics studies breaking the speed of light with information. Hearing studies of physicists reversing entropy on a small scale.

But those glimpses seem dull in comparison to the motivation I felt before. I do still want to build things to impress. To make happy and bring joy. But I don't know which direction to walk in. Every step of the way, I feel I don't impress any more, nor bring joy.

Maybe it's the sign of the times, or maybe it's me. Walking into the real world, I feel like I lost touch with what's important. Transportation is a non issue when you got a car. Communication is a non issue when the internet is "good enough". Time is a non issue, nobody else seems to want to live forever anyway. Then what's there left to solve? File transfers don't seem to matter, WeTransfer is good enough. Running out of public IPv4 addresses isn't an issue, you can charge more for renting out a static IP anyway. Texts don't matter any more because ChatGPT is there to talk to anyway. Optimizing for energy usage and computation doesn't matter because energy is cheap and hardware keeps on getting better anyway. Well, okay. RAM suddenly shot up in price, so maybe we need to optimize for a smaller memory usage. Encryption doesn't matter, we want to get rid of that anyway. I don't know anything I can still work on that doesn't feel like burning me out or giving 0 returns.

I'm slipping into pessimism. I want to look at that kid in the back of his dad's car and said I did him proud. I never gave up hope to build that teleporter and time machine. But I don't want to lie to him either.