[long_warmup]

I'm 36, was fascinated with electronics since I was 6 (I got Russian imitation of Atari - in the country where I come from computers were very expensive until 2000's). My cousin got a Pentium 386 when I was 12 and that's roughly when I wrote my first program - I still remember it as if it was yesterday, it was Q-Basic, I understood probably less than 5% of what I was doing and I wanted to write a program which would take password and let me in only when password is correct. At the time I was imagining computer programs like buildings with rooms. I wanted to have my own computer so I could do stuff with it - I was reading books about programming and taking notes until I was 16 (I understood close to nothing, but I was so on fire I did not care much). And when I finally got my first computer first thing I did was not o write a program but to play games, only when I got saturated and bored with games my fascination to computer programming came back.

I'm on about the same constant level of fascination since then, but it's not exactly the same thing that fascinates me. I was first fascinated by simple idea that I can build things I want and nobody can stop me from doing whatever I wanted to do. Later I was fascinated with data structures and how I can use them to do clever stuff (I was even taking part in programming Olympiads in my country, with no major successes - I was never taking it serious enough, it was always fun and not work). I remember my first job - I could not believe somebody will now pay me to work with computers. And so with my first job my fascination started to shift towards actual complexity I was building for my employer, I was thinking how do I make stuff which I can guarantee will work and in the same time I will be able to easily handle if anything stopped working. I was so under-qualified and there had been days I could spend 20 hours in a row battling silly problems and rewriting things to improve them. Later I started working with the team and fascination shifted towards security and scalability of solutions. I had privilege to work with many different persons, some not motivated (and not even hiding this).

Now I'm a simple programmer doing day-to-day work, there are days I'm not impressed with my performance, especially when I have to work with technologies I don't love - when this happens I try to rewire my mind to enjoy the tech I don't love. I won't name particular technologies no to get down-voted ;) for me to identify what exactly makes me feeling mentally blocked was the first step, the second step was to make a mental effort to like what I didn't like. Sometimes I could achieve this by building something on my own with these tools I did not enjoy, other times taking a break for a few days to recharge my batteries and come back with fresh mind. I also have dreams and ideas to build something on my own but to fulfill these dreams I need to remove some road blocks which require money, so earning and saving money motivates me for that simple reason. In the same time what demotivates me most is to get paid for the time I was not delivering much of the value. When I have such day I don't despair but instead remove main sources of procrastination and start fresh next day. My aim is to be happy with myself if I was my own employer.

The reason I wrote this whole story is that sometimes I go back with my memories to remember how was I feeling back then. This can also empower me and help me find ways around my mental blockers.