Success is counted sweetestThis is an Emily Dickinson poem that uses the imagery of a victorious army and a dying soldier from the opposition to suggest that perhaps only those who have suffered defeat can understand success.
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the Purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated - dying -
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
Although my life is no where near glorious, or morbid depending on your perspective, enough to make such grand exclamations about life, I have been thinking about this poem recently.
Today is February 25th, 2017. It has been exactly 285 days since I started working, 287 days since I graduated college, and 289 days since I took my last exam of undergrad. There are moments when I feel like college was just yesterday. When I hear my coworkers talk about their kids, I feel like I've been thrown into some Twilight Zone. In my head I scream, 'but I am a kid!.' But then when I hang out with my friends who are still in college, I realize how much of a difference a year makes. I hear their concerns and they feel so foreign and reminiscent to me. I think back to days when I would be worrying about exams and homework and making it to class on time. Now I worry about project deadlines and client satisfaction and making it to meetings on time.
How crazy this all is. Your body gets used to a 9 to 5 schedule. You find happiness in a life where you go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6:30. Your conversations turn into filing for taxes and dentist appointments and how your coworker's family is doing. You form new rituals. Listen to silence on the morning commute, music while working, and podcasts on your drive home. You create a mental list of ten things you want to do at work today, in your morning commute. You get to work, check your email, and realize there are two client escalations and three things that are broken and need to be fixed by the end of business day. You edit your mental list to prioritize these five things. You take a deep breath, get some coffee, joke around with your coworkers sitting next to you, and turn your focus to your day. Before you know it, it's noon. You decide to go out for lunch with your coworkers. You talk about your day, your projects, how ridiculous some client demands are and how silly some participants are. You have created a niche of your own. It's stressful at times, it's pleasant at other times. You always have help, you always have company. It is the antidote to your introversion. You blink and you realize nine months have gone by. How crazy this all is.
Your brain screams time out, and you agree. So here I am sitting on a couch in my living room. There's three huge windows open and sunlight is lighting up the whole room. I am sipping on coffee and I am thinking about these past nine months on my first real time off from work. It seems like I am finally getting a chance to take a deep breath.
It's both beautiful and absurd how much you are capable of learning in a span of nine months. You start from not knowing what a concept is to being so good at it that you can break the logic in that concept to solve a problem. For some, this might sound like the most boring thing in the world. To me, it's fun. I have always liked puzzles. I like breaking things to solve a bigger problem. I like taking a teaspoon of knowledge and using it to dictate how the waves of an ocean form. There's an intellectual high in that for me. My favorite part of my job is taking something someone has programmed, and finding ways to break it to build something more logically sound. This is not to romanticize this job I am working - it is a corporate job at the end of the day. It has its ups and downs. But this is a reminder to myself of why I do not hate what I do.
You have to have some motivation that makes you sacrifice a third of your day, five times a week to a place. For some, it's putting food on the table for their families and paying bills. For others, it's a combination of that and intellectual curiosity. And for the rest of us, who are lucky enough to not have to deal with bills yet, it's simply the will to learn and solve problems. You cannot sacrifice so much of your life to something you don't believe in.
I am a very emotional person when it comes to what I believe in. I feel too much when I read something well written. I get floored by small gestures of kindness and empathy. If I see a great piece of art, it brings a sense of stillness and wonder in me. It's hard for me to not be affected by things, people, ideas, situations. What I feel is on my face. I am stressed, people around me see it on my face. I am happy, people around me see it on my face. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Not because I am weak but because I have the emotional support around me to be okay when it does get broken. So it's nice for a person so emotional to have a place where they can be so logical and rational. To some extent, that is why I chose Math as a major, and why I decided to go into IT. Because it's a safe space for those emotional wrecks among us to go and be driven purely by logic. It prevents one from getting stuck in a rabbit hole. It reminds you that you can not know anything about a system and a programming language, and give it nine months and a whole lot of patience, and be able to master it enough that people come to you for guidance. It is nice to know that you can create something that helps someone somewhere out there, even if it is simply for them to have a way to get a prescription filled at a pharmacy.
So I guess for a while this is a nice place to be in. I am 23. I have a bachelor's degree and a job. My body has the strength to work 60-70 hour weeks on average. I have the drive to be good at what I do. I don't have any responsibilities. I have a lifetime ahead of me. And most importantly, I have a curious mind constantly wondering how things work. For now, I am content.
