Code is not what I'm all about

Well whadaya know? I'm having existential doubts these days. There's a battle that rages inside of me every time I get a little bit of free time: what should I spend my precious little time on? Until recently, I had been trying to get an enterprise-y application going, but it filled me with dread. Every line of code had to be extracted from my body with forceps, put into place and tested. It was a fine equilibrium, a delicate balance that I maintained by making myself believe that this is what I wanted to do. It was more that just something to do on a rainy day; it was more than just a reason to go out and hang out in a coffee shop all afternoon on Sundays. It was what I wanted to do. But I hated it. Well, most of it.

Anyway, that balance tipped over when I lost control of the app. Slowly, I stopped unit testing features. Then I simply started hacking it without too much thought or process. I started drifting. Thoughts would come and distract me. What is the next big thing? How can I become hugely successful and never have to worry about money again? Should I remain a Windows developer, forever branded as a .Net guy, or should I venture to the free ecosystem that is Linux? What about Mono? Oh, I could write server apps with Mono! But what about Lisp? I've always wanted to learn Lisp! I could write a Command & Query type application and start with the Login system and write it in Lisp. Or even better yet, I should write a .Net version of Common Lisp, just like that dude that wrote Clojure on top of the JVM. And of course, it would have to be done entirely by using the command line and VIM... Is there a book on Amazon for VIM?..

And on, and on, and on it would go. Every Sunday. Torture. I would power on my laptop and sit transfixed in front of the monitor, my hands calmly positioned over the keyboard. There would be a shell prompt and a VIM window open, waiting. Oh, the possibilities! And yet, I couldn't come up with anything to do. Eventually, I'd give up and log on to twitter, facebook, news.ycombinator, arstechica, slashdot, news.google, nytime, programmer-looking-for-a-problem-to-solve-that-wont-bore-him-to-death.com... I'd then slam shut the laptop lid and be in a funky mood all day. Hell, that's exactly what happened today. Again!

Except that today I decided it was all over. I would stop wasting the rest of my life pursuing something I'm starting to feel weak at. Focus on my strength. That's what I need to do! But then I read a blog post about using object databases and cracked open my Common Lisp book. Damn it! I feel excited about programming again. It makes me feel like getting my laptop down from the shelf where it's quietly sitting and hack on something.

Why?

I'm clearly passionate about something! I just can't put my finger on it. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna blog about that until I figure out what it is. Yeah. Blogging. That's so 2005! It's so not the next big thing.... oh... here I go again!