Stagnant

I feel stagnant. My entire life has always been in pursuit of something: challenging myself in various technical or creative fields, albeit never mastering any. I have worked with physical tools since childhood, later studying architecture, working in graphic design, collaborating on electronic projects with a friend, then moving to America, relearning architecture with a focus on sustainability, then photography, electronic music, and programming again, first creating free tools for others and later working on one of the most popular software packages in the world. I haven’t quite figured out what the driver has been, but I like to think it is curiosity, and not the desire to be worthy of others’ attention or love.

It has been a few months since my latest project became fairly stable, and it no longer challenges me like before. Add to that AI, which has become very good at problem solving, mostly due to its very large knowledge base and its incredible skill at orchestrating simple tasks. I used to be the human who would hold an understanding of the tool and the user context and incorporate that into his decision-making. Now I have AI perform the deep search, suggest solutions, and finally write and test the code. This process not only takes the joy of problem solving away from me, it also distances me from the problem context, which makes it a struggle to understand what the AI has been up to when it has a question or hits a wall. All that context I delegated to and trusted the AI with avalanches into my brain, creating a very cognitively painful experience.

I am in search of something else that is exciting and provides an opportunity to learn and be challenged. I want the joy of discovery again: the joy of learning something new that shifts my understanding and makes chips fall into new places. So what is next? Up to this point, I have always followed my heart and trusted it to lead me to my next milestone. It is a bit quiet this time, though.

Invisible

I feel invisible. My social interactions are limited to spending a few hours every day at a local café, mostly staring at my laptop screen doing work. What gets me into this space every morning is the idea that I would strike up interesting conversations with the regulars and find new friends and community. But reality rarely resembles my imagination.

I grew up in Iran, a completely different world from the country I live in now, the United States of America. They have fundamentally different cultures, economies, demographics, and worldviews, and above all else, the two governments are enemies of each other. I spent the first 30 years of my life in Iran, where I spent a ton of time collecting tools and building a toolbox to help me navigate and interact with the world I was part of. A government democratic in name yet radically religious, a city of 4 million people yet lacking diversity, a unique and ad hoc economy and business environment yet completely cut off from the world, a culture proud of its five thousand years of history yet lacking wisdom, and most closely, a family with no heart yet refusing to make a decision to either patch or break. The toolbox I built for this dissonant world has no tools for the life I moved myself into at 30. I gave all that up when I boarded the plane, in addition to severing the in-person component of my social ties, which, arguably, is the most important part.

I spent the next 15 years assimilating. But now I carry 30 years of baggage with me, in addition to my own temperament and idiosyncrasies. So I am inherently opinionated, and therefore I pick and choose what to assimilate. Follow American sports? No. Love jazz? Yes. Individualistic culture? No. BLT? Fuck yes! You get the picture.

The café in Portland is filled with people I don’t have much to discuss with, or when I do, I sound like a transplant mostly parroting interesting perspectives I have read about somewhere else. I am like a young kid desperately wanting to be liked and connected with; when there’s grey in your hair, it looks desperate and unappealing. But I am a smart, confident man, so what do I do? I dress well, make small talk, stay vague, and mostly focus on my work, so at least I get to keep my career.

I have gotten lucky, twice, to build software that thousands of people use on a daily basis. They know me by my first name, want to take selfies with me at conferences, and credit me for being their inspiration. However, these contacts do not send you random messages on a Sunday night asking how you are doing. They are a community, but for the persona of Ehsan they have built collectively, not the one he actually is.

Alone

I feel alone. Fifteen years is a long time. It was long enough to build beautiful friendships, watch them evolve into brotherhoods, accompany them into their next life chapters… and yet, watch them slowly fly away into their new flocks. Home is where your flock is, and when the flock moves away, the idea of Home slowly weakens with the distance.

I have been someone’s first choice before, so I know how it feels. I have chosen others as my first before and have given them that feeling. I have had many relationships, but the last one is the one I am quite proud of, despite it not working out eventually. I looked at her one day, felt that her existence resonated with me, and decided to love her. It was quite a different experience from falling in love like you do when you are young. It was, without a doubt, a choice. I would move mountains to be with her. Our communication styles got the better of us in the end, and we realised we cannot build something if we cannot be on the same page. I also learned you cannot go into a relationship with expectations, and that it is always better to focus on what I am bringing into it rather than what I expect from it.

On paper, I am a wonderful man with a life others may dream of: moderately handsome and smart, kind, put together, tasteful, cultured, a remote and well-paid job with lots of freedom, and good friends. Basically, the works. The flip side: I am also an opinionated, ethical to a fault, 45-year-old heterosexual single Iranian male with a belly and a black beard. This doesn’t sell well on dating apps, and believe me, I have tried. In the past two months alone, I have paid hundreds of dollars for memberships, priority likes, boosts, roses, etc., and it is unbelievable how incredibly low the ROI is. I know they are in the business of selling hope to the lonely, but female friends insist that chatting up strangers in cafés is not a thing anymore and that I have to be on the apps.

Yet most days are so quiet that I accidentally surprise myself when I hear my own voice.

What Next?

These feelings are very painful. It is hard to stay positive in the face of them. I will not be the angry old man who lives alone in his dimly lit apartment, snacking on past memories to keep himself numb, or fiddling with mildly interesting toys to make himself feel creative or smart. I watched my father live that life, and I am seeing where it led him. I will not repeat that.

For the first, I know I will find the next step. That is my specialty, if nothing else.

For the second, I will stop staying vague and let people see who I actually am, even if fewer of them like it.

But the third is out of my hands, and it is the one that grounds me and feeds the other two. All I can do is stop hiding that I need it.

Maybe this post is me doing that.