When you wake up, you decide whether you're a loser or not.
Attitude is everything. If you don't truly believe that you can win, that you have a chance, you're going to be relegated to the median. There is nothing wrong with the median. And the median is a great place to be if your goal is not winning in that particular slice. It's just that.. the median is boring.
I'm an average person, born to average people. I'm just one man, with a rapidly growing family, whose time is at a premium. The opportunity cost of doing something, instead of spending time with my family is painful. I'm just a man with skills, skills which are rapidly getting automated away.
A lot of the decisions that I make, reflecting back, have turned out well for me in the long run. The bags I have lost, and gained, the frequency of their occurrence. It would make most people go crazy. Maybe that's why I act a little crazy sometimes.
But the reason, the reason for all of this opportunity, is that when I wake up, I really try to win. I really do think I know better. There's a point - there's a point to going deep. To understanding things from their principles. Their base, base principles. When I wake up, I decide that no one knows any better than myself. I decide that my limits are largely self imposed, self imposed by how much creativity I have.
When I was prepping for interviews in 2019, I came across databases. I learned how they worked. I learned how storage engines, and physical storage devices work. I learned how NAND works. How it is fabricated. I thought through them, very carefully. Then, I worked as an authentication systems guy. What was the point of that?
My body just knows. It knows something there's something in my gut that tells me to go deep and search. I've seen the blindness of others. When people tell me "if it were so easy, why hasn't anyone done it?". I grab them by the shoulders. I shake them, I have tears in my eyes. "Exactly, exactly!", I plead.
I'm a researcher, an academic. Born to two academics. I'm an average person who decided to wake up and not be average.
The amount of neurons in a fly's brain is remarkably small, relative to a mammalian brain. Greatness cannot be planned. I just need a little more time, a little more time having fun and exploring. What use is lightning if it only strikes the ground? The reward is the satisfaction.
What do I want? Clout on the internet. But really, the respect of engineers that I myself respect. There are not so many of them out there. Hello!
- y