Member-only story
An Engineer’s Search For Meaning
This is what happens after accomplishing what you wanted
June 23, 2023. My flight is canceled and I have to travel to Rome to take another one. I am alone, and this is my first time in Rome. I rush to see the Colosseum, it’s 10 pm.
While I’m there, contemplating the glory of the structure, I sit down and start thinking about my life.
All I feel is profound grief.
I’m having a good life as a software engineer, and I feel I accomplished everything I ever wanted.
I’ve given lectures, I’ve had deep relationships, I became a senior software engineer, I’ve danced a lot, and I have lots of friends.
I experienced everything I wanted, at least in sample bottle size. And that led me to a profound and scary void in my heart.
The series of events that followed this realization led me to the most productive times of my life. I turned that feeling into a month of pure growth: 350 new followers on X, 120 new email subscribers, 60,000 tweet impressions, and an interview.
Here’s what happens when you face your destiny.
An Unexpected Career
When I decided to study software engineering I thought I would be creating beautiful apps with Artificial Intelligence, instead, I ended up having boring meetings to estimate Jira tickets and fixing drop-downs on websites.
I decided to study it not only because I like numbers and programming, but also because I wanted to solve big problems, I wanted to work on something bigger than myself.
Three years ago, after working as a developer for years I ended up living a very depressing life, not only because of the daily tasks, but also because I lived with two crazy flatmates who sometimes passed out in the bathroom after a night of excess. I was surrounded by people who only wanted to party…
