God fucking dammit. I’m trying to go back to school and I was like “Fuck this cleanroom work, Civil Engineering sounds like it would be a nice change of pace and I’d be doing something good”

Fuck. I gotta get started on something soon before I get too damn old.

Momma and Daddy told me I should be a painter. But, no, I was obstinate and followed my dreams of being an engineer instead.

:shapiro-poplar:

I’ve still yet to hear about a job that isn’t either soul sucking, useless, or shit paying and shit working conditions

Leave it to capitalism to turn arguably the most important role in a modern society’s infrastructure into something useless.

Holy shit I feel that though. I gave up on a computer science degree twice, and finally put it behind me the second time after realizing I can’t think of a tech job (that I could get anywhere near) which even serves a purpose beyond “process data in an office to help another office process their own data, etc etc etc.” Any job opportunity I saw was about 3 steps removed from having any coherent purpose you could explain to the average person. It’s endlessly fucking frustrating that thousands of young people, in search of a meaningful life, are tricked into wasting their talents on serving that worthless industry instead of using them for something worthwhile.

Now I’ve switched to an applied arts program where I do alternating terms at uni and a craft college. I know exactly what the typical reaction to that is, but I’m not falling for that guilt-tripping bait just to waste years working towards abstract fucking IT field “accomplishments” that no one will ever benefit from. That illusion of success only works if you still believe the fullness of your life should be measured by how much value you’ve produced, not to mention in a closed corporate system which ironically loses any real-world significance the moment you step outside of it. I do think hard work is often necessary to truly succeed in life, but the kind of work that must be done to save this society won’t be found there. I’ll probably have to find it myself, learning from others along the way.

IDK what I’l end up doing in the long run. Who knows. But the least I can do is tell the world some stories to help others make sense of life, or find a way to turn my beliefs into politically-charged art as unapologetically as possible (ideally through graphic novels or 2D animation). Even though the platform for an aspiring radical artist is pretty much guaranteed to be smaller than I’d hope, I want to give it everything I have and reach as many people as possible.

I find comfort in knowing that if change is really coming, then someday it won’t be this hard.

:juche-WPK:

not to dox myself too hard or anything but i literally write enterprise software that would definitely still have to exist in some form even in a communist society without regressing in technology, which is about as close as you can get to genuinely meaningful and helpful work in comp sci next to writing software for planes and MRIs, and there’s still so much bullshit to slog through. bureaucracy and excessive meetings about business and marketing that really aren’t that relevant to me writing code, it’s a lot sometimes, and even the parts of my job that aren’t bullshit are still pretty much busy work a lot of the time. anyway i really just want to say there’s more useful disciplines of engineering than building bridges, it’s a little reductive to limit being useful to society to just that, some of us going on the computer guys are still trying to do good work yknow? thank you