The Perils of Programming

I have spent the better part of the day trying to calculate how many kids in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools won the Presidential Fitness Award. It turns out that the SQL code necessary to figure out whether someone of a certain age and gender passed all the test is convoluted . . . not to mention that the data is dirty, ambiguous, and incomplete.

I like to program. It's something that I can groove on that often requires no conscious effort on my part. I sit down, and the programming happens. I am blessed to have such a valuable skill that I enjoy so much.

The problem is, I don't necessarily like the person I become when I program. Once I sink into a programming problem, it's hard for me to pay attention to anything else. My wife talks to me, and it seems to be coming from very far away . . . I suddenly realize that I missed the first half of what she was saying. I walk around the house, but I don't feel like I'm really seeing. Any capacity that outside stimuli have to invoke thought has been crowded out by the seething intellect, still stuck in a compulsive struggle to solve a problem. I didn't shower today . . . just couldn't seem to get around to it. I get a little bit zombified . . . or maybe I should say "anti-zombified" since zombies move through the world but have no mental life, while I am filled with mental life and practically catatonic to the world.

Thank God I don't have to do this all the time.