New Beginnings September 01, 2012
This is a time of change in my life. September marks the last month of me being a student at Tel Aviv University, a position I’ve greatly enjoyed (and hated) for the past three years. I still have a couple of projects to hand in, but the finish line has practically been crossed. I took a rather odd combination of computer science and generative linguistics (somewhere in between a major/minor and double-major), which proved surprisingly interesting and rewarding (heck, I’ve delved into more algorithms in linguistics than in CS per-se). I began a pragmatic guy, favoring a get-the-job-done approach over academic yadda-yadda, but over the course of my studies I’ve learned to appreciate (even admire) the breadth and power of the theory behind computation. It does make me a better programmer.
September also marks my transition from almost 5 years of being an employee at Big Blue to independent freelancing - quite a drastic move, being married and all, but one I’ve been looking forward to. I want to be all-over-the-place; I want to take on projects in all sorts of domains, from UX and mobile applications to embedded devices and distributed computing; from one-day projects to six months ones. I want to work on my own terms; to set my hours for myself; to earn enough in 3 days a week so as not to be sucked to the rat-race and wake up one day, 20 years from now, asking myself what the hell am I doing.
I get inspired by posts like this, of people willingly limiting their work hours, going on vacations, reading books or running in the park. I want to ponder idly, to have time to write, to read aimlessly on Wikipedia about William the Conqueror or cell membranes. To have time to run errands. I want my future kids to have parents on more than just weekends.
Life might prove me wrong – it has a tendency to show you you’re not so different from the rest of the world. But here I am nonetheless, taking the road less traveled by. Wish me luck :)
