Oluseyi, I did not understand your current situation but after reading more of your responses I understand your position with much more clarity. Not only do I apologize for my attack and withdraw it, I also extend you my deepest sympathies. Please feel free to email me, maybe you could recommend some books for me to read to help with my vocabulary.

quote:Original post by romanMagyar
I've been in a slump for like a month. I haven't programmed, visited this site, or anything program related. I'm a senior in high school, and I thought I would continue programming as my career. Now I'm getting second thoughts. I've read people post here saying stuff like, "I program as soon as I wake up" or "I've made a 3D engine in my first year of programming", and all of this type of stuff got me thinking maybe I'm not cut out to be a programmer or maybe this wasn't what I was meant to do. And what if I do continue programming and I can't find a job either because I'm not good enough or by then programming want be such a big deal job? Has anyone thought like this before? just confused

You know, there just might be another explanation for the way you are feeling. You might be on the cusp of a major breakthrough in thinking, also known as the old favorite, "And then the light bulb went on!"

A lot of people mistake the fact that they stop working and lose motivation because something is wrong when in fact something may be about to go very, very right and it is gathering steam deep in your subconscious just before revealing itself, and is using up a lot of mental resources to prepare itself.

This is akin to the myth of the writer's block. It actually doesn't exist at all, but people rationalized it did when in reality some creative thoughts are much more complex or of a higher order of thinking than you average creativity for the day type of output. These peaks in "breakthrough" are major in scope, and can represent several weeks, months or years in thinking finally coalescing and ta-da here you go conscious mind, write me down or draw me quick.

To give you an example from my own creative life (I've been a creative writer for more than twenty years, so I have pretty much seen it all when it comes to the creative process and lifepath), I have been working on a new novel. Well, any smart marketer knows a title (or brandname) can be everything when it comes to focusing, relating and engaging a prospect about what you are selling or putting across/relating.

Yet, you cannot copyright a title. This does not stop insensitive dolts from being the first to ask, "Der, what's the name of your book?" As if you would give away one of the most important marketing aspects of months if not years of work just becuase somebody asked who looks like they haven't read a book since high school.

Anyway, forgive the rant. Titles thus are hard to come up with something that works, and sticks in the mind of the prospect, so companies savvy in intellectual property protections often create working titles, such as Microsoft did with Longhorn, for example.

My newest book I have been calling by a particular working title for a long time, and everyone knew it as that. But after working on the book for three years, one afternoon not long ago a new title came to me that was a zillion times better than the working title I'd been using, even though that working title was pretty good bu anyone's criteria.

Now, nobody by my atty knows what the new title is, and, that title had been purcolating deep in my subconscious for literally the three years I had been working on the book. One day, it just popped into my mind, and presto, I knew that it blew away the old title, even though the old title was one everyone loved and thought fit the intent of the story very well.

The point is this, instead of feeling malaise about losing motivation and everything you described in your post, in terms of how creativity actually works in a person's life, you just might also be on the cusp of coming up with one of the best ideas you've ever had, and you ought to consider that as another possibility for why things are going on the way they are for you.

I know. I've seen this process in my life and other's for years and years. The important thing is to realize that you can't second guess your subconscious mind, because it is approximately nine times smarter than you waking life will ever be, that it may have found something significant to chew on in a mental subprocess from some inspiration or stimuli you may have run across in a most unlikely place or manner, and, it is simply gathering steam for the final presentation to your consciousness. Gathering that steam can detract from a whole bunch of other resources or things you might be working on at the same time as a manner of your normal development processes.

Creativity is like that. It is one of the most powerful faculties in the human mind. It's mysteries are not easily revealed, processively speaking, otherwise all the myths that are out there, and the nine hundred books about how it works that all state something different in each would not exist.

Give it a chance, take it easy, relax and realize that somewhere in your head is a part of you that is waaay smarter than you think, and, when it is on the job, sometimes it is resource intensive, and other things you usually think about come to a grinding halt. That's just the deal until you learn some of the creativity skillsets that permit you to work with it in a more structured way. Trust yourself enought to believe you are not intent on any level to sabotage yourself in the vast majority casese of any individual.

Heck, you might be about to come up with one of the greatest ideas you have ever had, and can only see the parts that are not working with the rest of you because the idea is not revealed to you consciously yet. Those parts may feel like malaise, demotivation or whatever, but, there is nothing negative in creativity, despite all that BS about suffering for your art and deals with the devil our self deifying rationalizations may allude to. Those are the dramatics of incomplete creative process diagnoses.

FWIW,
Addy


[edited by - adventuredesign on January 28, 2004 4:07:26 AM]