content warnings: braggy?, autism burnout, trans, capitalism, probably adhd, bipolar, self discovery, homelessness.

(crossposted from cohost! and mastodon)

you know, i thought i wanted to be a staff engineer, i thought i wanted to be an engineering manager, i thought i wanted to be a product manager, i thought i wanted to become a UI/UX expert, a CTO, etc. but idk if i wanna stay in tech

i've done some weird stuff in my life, like run large scale national warehouse operations, directed a AAA game music project, played in an r&b band, played the pipe organ at a church for 20 years, wrote for a cartoon, been broke and homeless for years in between the various chapters of my life of varying success.

and what do i do from here? theres so much i want to do. be a vfx artist, a 3d artist, a pixel artist, a game dev, write next gen music software, make educational resources to make reverse engineering approachable to anyone, get a song into a bemani game (got something into PIU infinity at least haha), write cheesy anime songs, run smaller supply chain ops for artists. write an operating system (? lol) etc

so as a software engineer in tech i just feel weirdly out of place a lot. i'm not on top of all the tech memes, the culture gets overwhelming from time to time and i often want to run away from it? i'm the unfittest person in the world. thats probably why i'm in LA and not some tech hub city lol. i feel closer resonating to creative fields.

i'm probably the furthest thing you could imagine from a "normal" person, whatever that means, maybe i mean neurotypical, even though it may not seem that way to many people. i just got ridiculously good at masking, mimicking, and as i've started to peel all of this away over the recent years, and coming out as trans, leading to me finding out i'm a lesbian, being diagnosed with bipolar, third culture stuff, questioning things like whether i'm asexual/aromantic or not, i'm now experiencing a huge buildup of burn out, cognitive dissonance. and it is very interesting, but it sometimes makes it feel like i'm just kinda weak inside, that my life has been a lie. i know that isnt true, i know thats not a good way to think. its hard to unravel all of what society, capitalism, colonialism has drummed into me, and some of that has just become a part of me, for better or worse.

i don't know if im celebrating, fetishising my struggles here, i don't know that i feel happy or sad about it all. just lost, sometimes. what does it mean to be me?

is it admirable? is it meh? idk, some people think either way. sometimes i feel either way. but it is what it is. this is my life, regardless of any kind of value or assessment attached to it or not. i can choose to keep most things to myself, like i usually do, or share it to the world beyond little fragments i give to ppl in conversations. i also tend to forget a lot of this stuff. did it really all happen if i can't remember? is this kind of story more common than i think? probably. who else isn't speaking up about this? have i been too self focused all this time to really know?

if you got this far then thank you for reading all of this