It’s been about two months since I coded last time. I have been quite busy for the past two months, with my time and energy occupied by the work and some business of the life. But things are calming down now and I don’t expect myself busy again like the past two months in the near future, so I am thinking maybe it’s time to go back to coding.
And that brings me another question: what am I going to do with coding?
Several years ago when the thought of learning coding first hit me, I was thinking maybe I could become a developer and earn big money because back then developers, especially those quite experienced ones, earned quite a lot of money (though most of them still have higher incomes nowadays compared with people in other fields). Then gradually I realized things were not going as I had expected (I set up a goal, I go for it and then boom, I get what I want). I didn’t become a developer for whatever reasons but I still like coding, just like I enjoy reading quite a lot. Maybe it’s more of my characters. Instead of gathering with friends and joining some parties, I’d prefer to do something by myself for my leisure time, like reading, writing, doing fitness, etc. though I also enjoy some sports with other people. So, coding becomes my new hobby.
Then what are we supposed to do with hobbies? to prove our values outside work? to make it our subsidiary business? or just to make ourselves happy as we always have something to be involved in… maybe or maybe not.
For now, I don’t think there is much point to talk about the purpose of having hobbies because hobbies are something we like and they are supposed to make us happy, and if we push too hard on their purpose, something changes and the good parts of having hobbies seems disappearing which will ruin the whole thing of hobbies. So why not just enjoy the coding itself? to make something we truly like with coding or to enjoy the challenges of some coding tasks, but remember the best part is the coding itself, not whether we have completed the tasks and challenges or not.
It’s like reading or writing or any other things we enjoy doing. We might have read a lot but that does not mean we can become scholars or have as much knowledge as scholars do. We might have written a lot, but that does not mean we can become writers, or write good articles like the famous writers do. Afterall, they are just our hobbies. We enjoy the things themselves, not what we can achieve with them or what kind of achievements they can bring us.