There are a lot of things in this world that give me comfort: Arsenal, Chess, Bon Iver, Max Ritcher, Phoebe Bridgers, Avatar, Cats, Ted Lasso, Vinland Saga, Cornflakes, Ed Sheeran, Bleach, watching Martin Ødegaard play. If I were to make a list of the people/things that make me very happy in this life, it’d be ridiculously extensive. I’m grateful for that. It’s a blessing to have so many avenues of happiness that I can cling to.
Writing code tops that list though, and by some distance. I’ve been trying to explore why that is, and for now, I haven’t completely accepted that I like it as much as I do “just because”. I can accept that I have some natural aptitude towards it and that I gravitate towards the space, but it still feels like there’s a lot more depth behind that rationale—some deeper construct that resides within me that allows me to make it my safe space. This is probably my mind doing its usual mental gymnastics again, but I’ve churned out a few paragraphs this evening to serve as my hypothesis as to why that is. —
Large portions of my adolescence were (and to a much smaller extent still are) ridden with anxiety. I've gotten exponentially better at managing the issue but looking back, there have been so many days across my life where it's felt like I couldn't breathe, where the sheer angst in my chest was heavy enough to keep me tethered to my bed, and where I have had to find a way to get through periods that were enveloped by my mind's suffocating anticipation of doom. I don’t feel like providing the intricate details explaining why I would feel anxious. I’m hoping to keep this entry brief, and I’d much rather keep those details in a standalone post for another day. But I can say that feeling that way felt like it was driven naturally by my difficulties in progressing through adolescence. For as I eclipsed greater degrees of sentience, I was much more aware that life could throw negative experiences at me, so I naturally worried about those (possible) negative experiences.
It’s possible a large portion of this anxiety was also influenced by my context. Retrospectively, Nigeria felt incredibly chaotic growing up, and the happenings around my country could often feel anxiety-inducing. I think the younger me was coming to terms with life and all its volatility. I understood that primary agency belonged to me, but the fact there were still so many other variables I couldn’t control felt scary. The future, by definition, presented itself as terrifying, and I recall feeling incredibly small, insignificant, and vulnerable to wherever the winds of chance & change would blow.
I started coding at around 12 or 13, and I recall it being immediately addictive. Initially, it was just fun to see that I could string a few keywords together to get my computer to do something, but as I got older, it wasn’t only fun. Coding also made me feel incredibly safe.
Playing around and building things that I wanted, it started to feel really cool how the bulk of decisions I had to make from development to production were up to me. I felt a greater sense of command, and I could steer my ship in any direction! I got to choose how I wanted to set up my workspace. I got to choose how I wanted to flesh out the design philosophy and styling. And if I was the only one working on an app, everything from hosting decisions to overall site architecture were also things within my control. I could quite literally pull something from my mind and have it materialise on screen in front of me. Applications were more or less what I wanted them to be, and although I would occasionally run into hiccups with bugs, the sheer force of my will was always enough to bend what I had in mind into reality. I liked that there were distinct rules to follow and that if I thought logically about things and followed the syntaxes, things would turn out how I wanted. The computer gave me what I gave it, and I knew that if I wrote code well, there was very little uncertainty regarding how my applications would perform.
In many cases, life doesn’t work that way. Reality is not always what you initially envision, and even when you make seemingly “right” decisions, things can still turn out in ways you’re not happy about. It’s out of your control, and there are limits to how far your agency can get you.
I suppose coding was my metaphor for control, and the colour-coded keywords I loved to string together was my attempt at building a world within me that allowed me to take charge of my initial context. It was somewhere I could define what variables I needed to use and how I wanted to use them, a comforting place where I was very rarely caught by surprise.
If all this is correct, and seeking agency is my “why”, the only thing that remains inconclusive is whether it’s a good “why”. It feels like I’ve crafted this space as a form of escapism that I’ve run to because of anxiety. I don’t know whether I can call this development/growth, or whether I’ve just avoided exploring the emotion intricately by staying in spaces that allow me to feel safe by writing as much code as possible. That bit is still unclear to me, so I’ll try and spend the next few days thinking of an answer.
There are a lot of things in this world that give me comfort: Arsenal, Chess, Bon Iver, Max Ritcher, Phoebe Bridgers, Avatar, Cats, Ted Lasso, Vinland Saga, Cornflakes, Ed Sheeran, Bleach, watching Martin Ødegaard play. If I were to make a list of the people/things that make me very happy in this life, it’d be ridiculously extensive. I’m grateful for that. It’s a blessing to have so many avenues of happiness that I can cling to.
Writing code tops that list though, and by some distance. I’ve been trying to explore why that is, and for now, I haven’t completely accepted that I like it as much as I do “just because”. I can accept that I have some natural aptitude towards it and that I gravitate towards the space, but it still feels like there’s a lot more depth behind that rationale—some deeper construct that resides within me that allows me to make it my safe space. This is probably my mind doing its usual mental gymnastics again, but I’ve churned out a few paragraphs this evening to serve as my hypothesis as to why that is. —
Large portions of my adolescence were (and to a much smaller extent still are) ridden with anxiety. I've gotten exponentially better at managing the issue but looking back, there have been so many days across my life where it's felt like I couldn't breathe, where the sheer angst in my chest was heavy enough to keep me tethered to my bed, and where I have had to find a way to get through periods that were enveloped by my mind's suffocating anticipation of doom. I don’t feel like providing the intricate details explaining why I would feel anxious. I’m hoping to keep this entry brief, and I’d much rather keep those details in a standalone post for another day. But I can say that feeling that way felt like it was driven naturally by my difficulties in progressing through adolescence. For as I eclipsed greater degrees of sentience, I was much more aware that life could throw negative experiences at me, so I naturally worried about those (possible) negative experiences.
It’s possible a large portion of this anxiety was also influenced by my context. Retrospectively, Nigeria felt incredibly chaotic growing up, and the happenings around my country could often feel anxiety-inducing. I think the younger me was coming to terms with life and all its volatility. I understood that primary agency belonged to me, but the fact there were still so many other variables I couldn’t control felt scary. The future, by definition, presented itself as terrifying, and I recall feeling incredibly small, insignificant, and vulnerable to wherever the winds of chance & change would blow.
I started coding at around 12 or 13, and I recall it being immediately addictive. Initially, it was just fun to see that I could string a few keywords together to get my computer to do something, but as I got older, it wasn’t only fun. Coding also made me feel incredibly safe.
Playing around and building things that I wanted, it started to feel really cool how the bulk of decisions I had to make from development to production were up to me. I felt a greater sense of command, and I could steer my ship in any direction! I got to choose how I wanted to set up my workspace. I got to choose how I wanted to flesh out the design philosophy and styling. And if I was the only one working on an app, everything from hosting decisions to overall site architecture were also things within my control. I could quite literally pull something from my mind and have it materialise on screen in front of me. Applications were more or less what I wanted them to be, and although I would occasionally run into hiccups with bugs, the sheer force of my will was always enough to bend what I had in mind into reality. I liked that there were distinct rules to follow and that if I thought logically about things and followed the syntaxes, things would turn out how I wanted. The computer gave me what I gave it, and I knew that if I wrote code well, there was very little uncertainty regarding how my applications would perform.
In many cases, life doesn’t work that way. Reality is not always what you initially envision, and even when you make seemingly “right” decisions, things can still turn out in ways you’re not happy about. It’s out of your control, and there are limits to how far your agency can get you.
I suppose coding was my metaphor for control, and the colour-coded keywords I loved to string together was my attempt at building a world within me that allowed me to take charge of my initial context. It was somewhere I could define what variables I needed to use and how I wanted to use them, a comforting place where I was very rarely caught by surprise.
If all this is correct, and seeking agency is my “why”, the only thing that remains inconclusive is whether it’s a good “why”. It feels like I’ve crafted this space as a form of escapism that I’ve run to because of anxiety. I don’t know whether I can call this development/growth, or whether I’ve just avoided exploring the emotion intricately by staying in spaces that allow me to feel safe by writing as much code as possible. That bit is still unclear to me, so I’ll try and spend the next few days thinking of an answer.