I've lost my inner geek

[NickStone]

I am a 43 year old guy from the UK and have been fascinated with computers since the 1980's. I was interested in GNU/Linux from 2000 and back then I used to report bugs all the time and was proud of the thought of helping to further develop GNU/Linux and its many applications.

Over the past year or so I have found that I am not reporting bugs at all and that whenever I come across an application with bugs and does not work properly I tend to remove it from the computer and use another application.

What I appear to want now is a fully working system but don't want to spend time helping to make it better.

Whats happened to my inner geek?

[HalationEffect]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

I am a 43 year old guy from the UK and have been fascinated with computers since the 1980's.

Heh, in just a few months I'll be able to say exactly the same thing (I'm a young whipper-snapper of 42, also in the UK, been a computer-phile since 1982 when I cashed in my premium bonds and got myself a Sinclair ZX81 for the princely sum of £50)

[NickStone]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

[quote=HalationEffect ]

got myself a Sinclair ZX81 for the princely sum of £50)

That was my first computer as well.

[dequire]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

I just turned 43 myself. Bought my 1st computer with money earned from working on summer farms. It was a Color Computer II. Though a KDE and open source software advocate for life, I've found that my participation in Free Software and it's communities ebbs and flows depending on other factors in my life. I've often heard this from devs as well. Sometimes you just walk away for a while and re-charge. Nothing wrong with that.

Remember, when it starts to feel like a job, take a break and play some Minecraft 8)

[woodsmoke]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

Yep, minecraft or do something completely different, like go hiking, if you aren't married get a new girlfriend! , learn to do something safe that has an "edge" to it, not skydiving! maybe rockwall climbing!

Anyway, I had it a few years ago and had to just subtract myself from the scene for a while to "burn out the cobwebs".

woodsmoke

[Qqmike]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

I think it's normal to go in and out of our geek-y phases. Taking a break and not worrying about it makes good sense. I've noticed that it is easy and natural to go geek when you are first learning new, neat stuff. But after doing it and somewhat mastering it, the thrill and motivation wear off and it becomes work. Setting up a new Kubuntu system is fun--the first few times you do it. But sometimes you just want it to work from the get-go without doing all your detailed, fine set-ups on it.

[eggbert]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

It's called 'getting old.' The same thing is happening to me. I am nearly 40 and find that I have to push myself a little bit harder to learn new things than I did when I was in my 20s, where I could go for days on end geeking out without batting an eye.

I think as we age something happens to our brains' ability to learn new things. Kind of get complacent. In any case I am going to fight it for as long as I can. I do not want to lose my inner geek.

[claydoh]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

Being 45, and not getting into computing until much later for my age(1998) there is something to be said about the getting old part, but not necessarily due to lack of learning. It is more of a casual or low level 'burn out' or just perhaps just plain getting tired of messing around and getting something done once in a while. or it IS just a bit of complacency

[Qqmike]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

Working on the "getting old" premise from eggbert and claydoh ...

It can also be that (getting old). But there's an aspect to "getting old" that is positive (or it SHOULD be positive): maturity. Of course, we can define "maturity" arbitrarily. For example, "maturity" is aging and yet knowing how to NOT act your age! Knowing how to act young & crazy & not-so-tightly-wrapped.

But let's define maturity, here, as changing priorities, looking for deeper meaning, prioritizing how you spend your time, accepting that your remaining time in quite finite. I used to really believe that life was all about being precise scientifically and mathematically. In fact, life could be reduced to a mathematical system (in a rigorous fashion), just as mathematical logic can be. That sort of "immature" thinking: living life without a life.

I think as we get older (you guys are 40's, some of us are 60-70's--62 here and crazy as hell), our priorities change. Spending all afternoon figuring out some code/commands to make video work or to detect a thumb drive just doesn't do the trick anymore; it doesn't hold the excitement, satisfaction, challenge, and intrinsic meaning that it used to. What does hold meaning then as you age? Well, that's another topic but it is entirely a personal thing. Time does become a limited resource. Of course, when you are young, you think your "remaining time" is infinite.

So, as you get older, your motivation (to do mundane, tech tasks) changes, and for good reasons.

[claydoh]

Re: Re: I've lost my inner geek

+10000
You bit it the head

Sent from my Android phone using Tapatalk

[Qqmike]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

Another way to look at this is to use the "clerk" metaphor or archetype in psychology. The clerk implements or operates or maintains a system that was already creatively designed and perhaps set up by someone else. Most people spend their lives as clerks, rather than as innovators in positions of influence. For the most part, setting up an OS, tweaking it all afternoon (or all day or half the week), is being the clerk. Yeah, some of the work is somewhat stimulating, but usually, not really. You are not writing original code or anything at that level. Usually, you are working by trial-and-error, googling for quick clues, cutting and pasting various combinations of commands gleaned from other posts, and so on.

So, to word it another way, as you get older, it becomes more difficult to use yourself as a clerk for a day or two to get your video to work or your OS to recognize your darned thumb drive.

[MoonRise]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

Working on the "getting old" premise from eggbert and claydoh ...

maturity...... our priorities change......

Will be 43 in a couple of Months. I was going to originally post to this when it started and say "It's a part of getting older". Didn't because I just DON'T believe that. However Q I think has the correct way of saying it. Basically, Life Happens. It's still there. Just other things at the moment will overshadow it. I'm in that rut now but because things at work have become sooo project heavy lately, all my "Geek" is concentrating on keeping the old fun geek stuff running like the entire Network, servers, DB, equipment, applications, web services, backups, etc... You can see where the geek can easily get buried on this end.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: I've lost my inner geek

But let's define maturity, here, as changing priorities, looking for deeper meaning, prioritizing how you spend your time, accepting that your remaining time in quite finite. I used to really believe that life was all about being precise scientifically and mathematically. In fact, life could be reduced to a mathematical system (in a rigorous fashion), just as mathematical logic can be. That sort of "immature" thinking: living life without a life.

Very well said.

I think as we get older (you guys are 40's, some of us are 60-70's--62 here and crazy as hell), our priorities change. Spending all afternoon figuring out some code/commands to make video work or to detect a thumb drive just doesn't do the trick anymore; it doesn't hold the excitement, satisfaction, challenge, and intrinsic meaning that it used to.

From this 50-something's perspective, you've hit the nail on the head. I used to get such immense satisfaction out of things like reading UNIX manuals for fun...just poring over them, reading up on commands I hadn't tried yet, learning about the file system hierarchy and how/why things worked the way they did, and implementing new tools as I needed them. I LOVED troubleshooting the most obscure problems, and staying up all night cranking out a critical program was not at all unfamiliar to me. Going to work on the weekends, at both of my programming/sysadmin jobs, was just something I did; it was quiet, I could do whatever I needed to do without disturbing the workflow when I brought the system down. There was no problem too difficult, too challenging. In fact, the more the merrier. I loved what I did and couldn't get enough. (And keep in mind this was before Google. Information was in these things called books.)

Now? Can you say polar opposite?! I know that for me it's not just a function of aging/boredom/more important and/or satisfying things, etc., but also my health situation. After my most recent really serious health crisis, the brain tumor, first I was forced--by the operation and its complications--to slow down, then later came to realize that there's really not much that's all that important. Now, instead of digging through the guts of the OS myself trying to figure out why something's not working, I'd rather just post a question, or Google it. This is a HUGE shift for me, but it is what it is. *shrug*

What does hold meaning then as you age? Well, that's another topic but it is entirely a personal thing. Time does become a limited resource. Of course, when you are young, you think your "remaining time" is infinite.

I know I've said this before, but because of health crises my "I'm invincible" period ended at 21. From then onward I've been consciously, continually aware that I DON'T have infinite remaining time. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

So, as you get older, your motivation (to do mundane, tech tasks) changes, and for good reasons.

Agreed, 100%.