On collecting and hobbies
I've wanted to build and host a personal website for a while now but could never find enough time or good reason to do so besides it being somewhat standard for professional/aspiring software engineers and especially those interested in web development. However, since graduating from Cal Poly this December and beginning a little sabbatical period (college was hard work!!), I've found both non-software interests that could be fun to write about and the time to do so.
I'm currently writing this on Notepad (no website yet) from my girlfriend's apartment in LA. Compared to most other cities I've spent some significant time in, I've found that LA really does have everything. It's just so big. Any scene, any culture, any hobby or interest you might think of probably has representation here, and it's probably pretty significant. Part of it is just that there are a lot of people living here. One benefit of all this: Facebook Marketplace is absolutely full of outrageous deals on like, everything. Second-hand stores too, depending on where you are.
Case in point: the two stereo receivers pictured above. I bought the Onkyo for $30 on Marketplace and the Technics for $20 a day later from a Goodwill in the San Fernando Valley. Maybe I exaggerated slightly with "outrageous" but I prefer to assess value relatively anyway. And in fairness both were well below their respective average sale prices on eBay when I bought them.
That led me to ask myself: why did finding a deal on a vintage stereo receiver bring me so much joy, and why did buying a second one a day later only add to that? I don't even have my turntable or records with me, and I don't own passive speakers to run with them at all. The Technics is also missing its AC power cable. But I was no less happy about the purchase -- in fact, I think I was even more happy. This seems especially odd because I did not care in the least, or know a damn thing about hi-fi stereo gear three months ago when I was still in school.
You might think that I am just really bored or that I got lucky recently finding a hobby that suits me. Yeah, possible. But people who know me will suspect that that's likely not the case. Throughout my life I've always tended to flit from hobby to hobby, interest to interest, though never before becoming somewhat obsessed for a period of several months to several years. I've considered the possibility that I simply have trouble committing to things long-term. While I've come to believe that that is also not quite right, if it were the case I never felt too bad about it. I've always poured all my "long-term commitment" juices into school and work and I've been successful so far in that regard. But no, I don't think any of those explanations quite get to why finding (and buying) that second receiver made me so happy, and more broadly why I engage with my interests the way I do. Trying to understand that is what led me to writing this blog post.
My parents (and more recently myself as well) have spent a lot of money on my interests throughout my life. I've played soccer, baseball, tennis, basketball, years of karate, tried skateboarding, archery, so many computer games, trading card games, etc. One of the more foundational (and expensive) ones was Lego. I'd think for weeks and months about the Lego sets I wanted and work up the courage to ask my mom or dad to buy them for me the next time we were at the mall or Target. I'd spend the ride home reading every inch of the box and thinking about how great life was. But the best part was building the set, of course. It was cathartic. All that waiting and thinking (which was really never all that long looking back) had led up to the great moment of actually assembling the set, admiring all the new pieces and figures, imagining the final product as it came together piece by piece (ha ha). That moment could last as long as a month or be as short as 15 minutes, depending on how large the set was.
And then, it was done. I was never really one to enjoy action figures or model planes that much, so I didn't actually "play" with the completed sets very often. They would go up on my shelf and I'd look at them from time to time, but that was mostly it. At times the feeling would go from neutral to negative and I began to actively feel bad about not playing with my completed sets. It felt grossly wasteful. I’d look at the sets on the shelf, or the skateboard under my bed and be reminded of all the time and money spent on something I no longer actively enjoy.
It wasn’t until later (or right now, kinda) that I began to identify the process of learning, the anticipation of great skill or knowledge, and the incremental satisfaction of looking back to see how far I’d come in my pursuit as the core elements that made up the happiness I derived from my hobbies. It wasn’t actually reaching the top of the pyramid that I liked and that was surprising to me. I love racing up the side as fast as my feet can take me, looking up in awe at the top and the people above me, and being able to turn around every so often and see that I am actually quite high up, relatively speaking.
Okay, so I need to find a pyramid with an infinite number of steps. Or a Lego set with an infinite number of pieces. Thankfully I don’t have an infinite amount of time, so just something bigger than I can complete in my lifetime should be sufficient. Okay, then I could just learn the hex code for every possible color by heart, right? Six hex digits is 24*6 which is 16,777,216 different colors. Probably good enough. If I’m optimistic and say I live 80 more years, I’ll only have to memorize about 574 and a half colors a day starting now. Or maybe tomorrow so I don’t finish a day early... Okay, so the thing I’m working towards should probably feel worthwhile to me too. The other problem is that I am a human capable of feeling overwhelmed by the idea of infinity. That’s why the intermediate satisfaction I get from it, whatever it is, is really the most critical part in all of this. That’s the part that allows me to feel like I’ve achieved something in this lifetime without really ever being “done”. Because once or twice, I wouldn’t finish a set. The final product felt too far away, and it didn’t look all that cool in its various half-finished states unlike many of the other sets I built.[1] So I lost interest. Sometimes I hit a plateau where I feel small and near the beginning, and I look up at the people ahead and feel sad rather than excited or in awe, and the work it takes to move forward doesn’t fill me with joy. This does happen. Though I’ve found that sometimes I’ll come back years later and be happy I’m not starting from scratch!
So that’s why I love programming, I think. And reading the classics, and playing guitar, and recently learning to make coffee that tastes good. And of course, trying to figure out how to listen to music in a way that sounds good. These things all go as deep as you’re willing. A lifetime, even. There’s always another Redditor to tell you your speakers should be even farther apart, or that you could’ve refactored that silly little function into a robust™ AbstractToastHeaterGeneratorFactoryBuilderInterfaceImplementer (credit to u/xigoi for that one, lol) to make it truly Enterprise Level.[2] Really though, there has never been another time in history where we've had so much knowledge so easily accessible to us, and most of the time I find this fact very exciting. I often find myself scouring Wikipedia or Reddit in the middle of the night, frantically trying to learn everything I can about some random, mildly esoteric topic (a type of program I want to write, a piece of gear I want to find, a new method for brewing coffee, etc.), and finally going to sleep completely excited to try something new the next day. So the Technics receiver to me is not a potentially broken piece of obsolete gear, and a duplicate of my Onkyo functionally at that. It represents an intermediate step in my "hi-fi journey", one where I can learn more about components and their compatibility and differences — even about the hardware if I need to repair it — while still having a piece of gear that I think looks and sounds pretty freaking sweet. Plus, now I can research speakers to go with it…
One way you could put it is that I just love shiny new things. Well that was a bit rude of you but not entirely untrue. I think discovering my love for programming and software and seeing how it has only grown over time has convinced me that I find new knowledge as shiny (or old and dirty?) as a cool piece of vintage hi-fi gear. And when you learn that I'm usually the one who orders the new thing at restaurants, and that I want to travel the world, I think you could come to a more generous assessment that I probably have a great, impossibly large curiosity for life, and that it's that endless curiosity that has always and will always drive me as a person.
This got more personal and navel-gaze-y than I was planning, but I think I like it that way, as a kind of reason for this blog existing as well as a little intro to me, tying all the things I may write about here together (which may vary greatly and change over time, see above).
If you read this whole thing, thanks for believing in me :D And sorry if I used too many metaphors. This post was vaguely inspired by James Hoffman’s incredible video: What Does A Great Cup Of Coffee Taste Like?. I recommend it even if you don’t care about coffee. A commenter described it: “This isn't a video about coffee. This is a manifesto on how to appreciate things.” Which is funny but kind of accurate as I found it pretty profound for a 7-minute video about coffee.
If this ever goes up on my own website with my portfolio and stuff and a potential employer is reading this, please hire me!
thanks,
andrew