Protected: I need some motivation

This is a ranting post after a month and a half I have to endure my own depressed attitude and had nothing done properly. When we were little, when we are students, when we are young, we have dreams. We wanted to become great people: great scholars, knowledgeable doctors, innovative inventor or even a hero who bring justice for all. Then we devised plan, we wanted to get good grades so we will get admitted to the correct place (note that I live in an Asian country - you study to get admitted before you can even have a future). Then with the knowledge we will invent new things, show people new ways to work and live in a better, harmonized society. It's always easier thought than done. Is the education you have give you the fish or it give you the fishing rod and teach you how to fish? Which is better? The answer is: it depends. The people who know how to fish must also know where to fish, when to fish, and they must fish somehow that there will be fish left for their children too. Others just beat the fishermen and stole their fish. Well, that's some off-beat thinking but it serves well as a metaphor. You are good at what you are good doesn't mean you are going to do great stuff. It require a delicate combination of working conditions. You have to make sure nobody is going to steal your fish before you can work at peak efficiency don't you? Or will you just fish so others can steal from you? It's a catch-22, a dilemma, a Mexican stand off, a game better won by not playing but you have to play it. You have to feed yourself, nobody is gonna do that for you! You know why even the media here stop telling stories about some poor student with poor conditions got admitted to the university at top position, get some kind of national award or even get a sponsor all by himself? Because it's even worse than bullshit; it creates a kind of hope that's next to impossible to achieve. Sometimes hope can be devastating, you just break down without it. It's a house of card with half of the bottom pieces taken away. Likewise, can you improve yourself when everyone around you just want to pull you down? Pop quiz: how many computer science professor is it gonna take to organize a successful conference in this country? The answer is infinity, as they will all get hit by motocycles. Marx or someone following his theories once said "working is glorious". What he want to to motivate the worker so they can enhance their working methods, become knowledgeable and ultimately know how to control their life. Ironically, it's exactly those kind of saying that give the employer the power to control their employees. Why would you need payment when we are giving you experience, an invaluable asset? How many experience is enough? Well, that's a question only the next people who will hire you - your next employer can answer. Even some 3 B.Sc. and 2 Ph.D. can sometimes become inadequate for a job... That's why regardless of culture, regardless of education, the employee is (nearly) always in the passive stance. They will only hire you when they see you are going to make them that extra value. In other words, you work by their rules, you make what they want, you are theirs! Motivate yourself with that! Can you better yourself when, say, your parent don't want you to or invest to make you so? The same thing goes for your employer. Unfortunately most of us can't tell how all the parts fit together in a multinational corporation, and it's not until too late that you see the true intention of someone who has just talk nice to you a few months ago. I'm not trying to discourage anyone who's reading this from getting a job (if there's anyone reading this) but it's to say that not all your dreams is going to come true - it depends. I too, wanted for once I would be given all the conditions to do something I dreamed, something I have the desire to perfect without any worries about time or budget... But I know it's something that will only come once in a blue moon and I may just waste it aiming for the next level of perfection! Yes, perfect is the enemy of good, yet another dilemma to think about. And so I who had a dream - is depressed :) (Er... may be more than one dream actually!) And onto procrastination... Time management, an issue it's gonna take forever to talk about (get it?). Being able to achieve dreams requires a combination of internal and external force. As I said, I'm not telling you to put all the blame somewhere else... As a student, I can be sure nobody never, ever leave an essay, an assignment, a lab task later for some sort of fun. It's all righty, it's our basic instinct to find fun place to dwell, enjoyable stuff to enjoy, so our complicated life can be relaxed for a few moment. Then, it becomes a habit. You just can't start doing anything unless you do something else first. And before you know it, you ended up doing everything unnecessary in your world! And for all of you who's thinking the solution is simple: think again. That sentence is a bit tricky: what's important? What's unnecessary? Is that up to you to decide? Is it going to stay that way forever? Life is dynamic, so is your objective, but being too dynamic can leave you disoriented, you end up going in circles. That's exactly what I'm stuck in at the moment. I have the urge to let my thoughts out but I'm afraid it's going to take time I could spent doing something else but if I spent that time the other way around, I couldn't concentrate on what I'm doing for there's still a lot of thoughts I'm keeping, and as you may have know, it's a disturbing feeling to have too many things left in your central processing center. Write what I want to write to a piece of paper as most time management guide often tell you to do is even worse as it take more time to write than to type. So, I ended up blogging about how I'm going to blog on another matter, like a location service's architecture, how to live with J2ME and my first android application; all while forcing myself to learn a bunch of new things I can't name them all. Blogging is not going to earn me a penny, maybe nobody will even read these post - they are in English while most of the people I know are Vietnamese... Ah, I can recall I said that before! But I'm still blogging, I started to develop the need for it - like the need for breathing. My mind would suffocate if my thoughts doesn't go somewhere. I may underachieve in something you consider important but, I can't do it any other way, even though I know it's better. It will give me experience to actually do code than doing planning all day but... do I want to spent years locking myself up inside office walls while beautiful sunny afternoons gone by? And that's just why I'm wasting another post about my habit but it's not going to change. Further thoughts These lines were added one month later, considering that this post is locked from public view. I started to get the pessimistic view two desperate programmers had , and I started to sound like them too. It’s scary! I like to went out, I want to have an more open working environment. Every second spent in office space seems to suffocate me even while the air filtration system is still working fine. I want no cubicles, no walls, no limit! I know freelancing is the way but I just don’t know where to start. Furthermore, I’m afraid of changes. I’m quite open, yet introverted, another contradictory fact. It’s always hard to start something, like an old Chinese saying. Who must I contact to get a project? If someone had a project, will they trust me with it? To gain their trust in my ability, should I waste several months doing projects for nobody? (yes, I think I have the skills required for any kind of project) With a large chance that it won’t be used? Is that a waste of both my time and my intelligence (which I can hardly bear for even hours)? All the while when I can’t work without some motivation, namely money! And even when I succeed in starting my own business, by then nobody is going to manage my time for me, the risk of a project’s failure is all mine to bear, thus all the stress is going nowhere, considering the fact that I’m still shy before girls, all girls who have a little something for me to like, not necessarily are they beautiful, talented or just nice. Life is so complex you can’t solve it within one blog post. From freelancing to getting a girlfriend, everything in between have an effect on others. Maybe I’ll just have to content being a cube dweller (actually a have a room at work) and just sitting in one place dreaming about a day when I can both work and have coffee at the same time. That vision about having to dream somehow just seems too familiar (I’m shivering). I’m not going to take into account newspaper articles who recommend you to say “whatever” to everything and blindly step forward. I like to have everything planned, with benefits and consequences laid out plainly. Unfortunately people just don’t like this. They love to complicate everything so you won’t know what to do and (by chance) do what benefits them. It’s cruel and manipulative when you think about it but it’s just the way things work in this world. From what I experienced, it’s better to hesitate a bit (and just a bit) to let others walk pass the abyss first.