It's been some time...

…since I’ve been productive and also enjoyed it.

They always say that you shouldn’t make your passion your job.
They also say that if you choose a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
I went with the second one. I had the fortune to work on a lot of neat projects over the years, especially at university, that I just enjoyed working on. Some of it even for money. Had to eventually take a part time (well, 60%) job for money after I finally finished my master’s.

That one took over, and for a few years I also enjoyed what I worked on. Sure it’s a bit more… let’s say demanding working in the industry with people you didn’t choose to work with, but there’s a lot to learn in that area (- it might be the more important one). Lately there has been a lot more management. Which I was honestly kinda hopeful for. It’s great to have people help making the work visible. It’s also nice to have someone translate between departments.

But as you probably expect, it was not only that part of management. It also was a lot of excel sheets, having redundant information, and always breaking layout in f-ing libreoffice. In hindsight there were probably a lot of signs on how events would turn out. Time is running fast though and what started as “wanting to make it work” turned to “I dread thinking about having to make something work” quite fast. I was worried I’d lose my passion for working on software. A tale probably told too often to count.

Realization hit me while I was working on a spreadsheet, figuring out something for a software I had in mind.
I didn’t lose my passion, I just worked for something I was not passionate about anymore.