Approaching my 30s

I'm 27 28 (as of releasing this post) now. I am approaching my 30th birthday and I want to reflect on myself so far. Especially as recently things happened, broke up with my girlfriend and I want to reevaluate my priorities.

I started coding and living with computers since a young age. Over time I have been imagining myself to be like Theo de Raadt or Dan Kaminsky (though I am no where near their level). I think of my work, either in the company I work for or just open source during my free time, a gift to the world. I truely admire what the FreeBSD folks said "We think it (BSD) as a gift. People will take it. Do their own thing with it. And once in a while they show up and we find out what people had done with our stuff". I feel that my work (not job day job) being a calling. As of now I am maintaining a library that found it's way into Debian. And several seen in real, production environments. If you remembered the XKCD comic about dependencies. I feel that I am somewhat close to that.

Should I continue on the current path? Or should I take a break and focus on my personal life? What is my purpose in life if not doing what makes me happy?

I understand there's no standard answer to this question. Breaking up with my girlfriend has nothing to do with my career. But, I still wonder, am I on a path where I will say "I have no regrets" when my time eventually comes? Or will I regret? I remembered an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup and so looked it up.

Yeah it's hard to give advice. At least as hard as to take advice. Don't over specialize, don't be too sure that you know the future. Be flexible and remember that careers and jobs are a long-term thing. Too many young people think they can optimize something and then they find they've spent a couple of years or more specializing in something that may not have been the right thing and in the process they burn out because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing. I meet a lot of sort of "junior geeks" that just think that the only thing that matters is the specialty of computing programming or AI or graphics or something like that and well it isn't and the rug might be pulled under them but for that. And if they do nothing else, well if you don't communicate your ideas you can just as well do Sudoku. You have to communicate and a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code they can change the world but you have to be able to listen, you have to be able to communicate with your would-be users, and learn from them, and you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them. So you can't just do code you have to do something about culture and how to express ideas and I mean I never regretted the time I spent on history and on math. Math sharpens your mind, history gives you some idea of your limitations, on what's going on in the world, and so don't be too sure. Take time to have a balanced life and be ready for the opportunity. I mean a broad-based education of odd-based skill set, which is what you build up when you educate, you're patiently building a portfolio of skills, means that you can take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. You can recognize it sometimes, we have lots of opportunities but a lot of them we either can't take advantage of or we don't notice. It was my fairly broad education, I've done standard computer science and compilers, I've done multiple languages, I think I knew two dozen at the time, and I have done machine architecture, I've done operating systems, and that skill set turned out to be useful.

Certainly I identify myself as a hacker and a geek. But on the other hand, it's not like I only cared about technology and code. I love people and communities, meeting people and figuring out what we can do together - and better and more fun. I code, I learn and I make crap because it is both fun and it is the means of helping people beyond whom I know personally. It's also not I've guilt trapped myself into doing FOSS. But I do FOSS genuinely and take it seriously.

Few days after breaking up. The feeling of loneliness is real. Me, in front of my trusty keyboard typing messages and articles. As if I want people to know that I exist while I know people know. I do not know that the answer to my initial question should be.

The above part was written a year ago more or less. Today, late nigh, somehow I dug up this draft from my pile of unfinished logs. I mean, I am over it. I know what I want I suppose, I have, I think, what I always wanted and no longer conflicting with what I set out to be.

Who knows know. Dodging your problems actually worked out for once.