It's the last day of June, I'm sitting inside a yellow Kangoo in front of Playa el Jablito.
June is always an interesting month, I think it's the summer energy that makes us question a lot of things, as for me the most frequent question I had for the past weeks was "why?".

Today is also my last day working for the company I'm currently at, the decision of quitting came pretty unexpectedly gotta admin, and from a lot of perspectives it seems unreasonable: super friendly people in my team, very low pressure environment, freedom in working hours and location, good salary... and I still decided to quit.
It does feel absurd to quit and give up such conditions, especially at 22, it's theoretically the perfect job to earn some money, travel and make experiences. Everytime I thought about quitting in the past two weeks I asked myself if I was about to take a very stupid decision, and whether I'm just a priviledged white kid who doesn't even have a slight idea of what it means to struggle in life.

But this is why the human mind is fascinating, you can try to be rational all you want, but the feelings will never be dictated by rationality, by your experiences instead.
When you sit down in front of your laptop and your mind refuses totally to complete the Jira tickets you are supposed to complete, you can try to be as rational as you want, but you have no choice, you are forced to change, and I find this a very magical brain mechanism, perhaps self-defense on higher level than just survival.

Okay cool, but well how am I gonna survive then? I need to find another job. Being a software engineer in the current age is very controversial for me. I'm starting to become more and more tech-averse, yet I love building software and it's what I know how to do best.
How can those two things go hand in hand?

When I say that I'm becoming more tech-averse it's because I see and experience everyday how tech is making our life worse.
You know the deal, people scrolling instead of talking to each other, comparing themselves everyday even in the smallest matters, getting their personality stripped away, the economy going crazy, the performative illness that is being spread through social media, the extremely high expectations towards life and relationships.
I don't wanna be a contributor of this replacement of human experiences, hence is there even space for my skills given that premise?

Here was me and my thoughts, sitting in front of that fishing village where people live in roulettes and small white squared houses, two exams left to take in university, a remote-first well-paying job and just a strong desire to discard all of it.

It's now mid August and not gonna lie, I was pretty dazed and confused in June. I was in the middle of a crisis, but a very useful one. It triggered via a combination of things, but mainly the transition from university life to this new job I had, and by talking to a lot of different people.
The latter was possible because I spent the past two months in a coliving in Fuerteventura. You probably heard some people saying "I'm traveling to find myself", or "traveling changed me", well I didn't go there with that intention at all, I just didn't have a place to stay and choose the first random place that inspired me and that I could afford.

you haven't met yourself yet, but the advantage to meeting others in the meantime, is that one of them may present you to yourself

That's what actually unexpectedly happened in that coliving, so many people passed by, sharing their experiences, opinions, views and perspectives.
I've got the chance to see that many different lives being lived, and there is no chance for you not to get moved by such environment.

I luckily managed to see my life from a third-person perspective. University has always threw me off, I've always been against the computer science academic environment. I'm not gonna go into details here, but I'm just gonna link two videos that sums it up pretty well. But I never really stopped and listened to my thoughts for too long, it never really sunk in the fact that it wasn't the right path for me, it was only very recently after basically 4 years that I had the realization and it's probably thanks to the job I got. Because after all those years of listening to my parents and society, saying that you need a degree if you wanna "make it" (whatever that means), I actually got the kind of job you get after uni, a safe and well paying corporate job (and in my case I was even luckier as I got one that gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility than others). And I just stopped and realized: this has never been what I wanted, why did I go down this path in the first place if it lead me to something I don't want, it doesn't make any sense.

It's funny because I always knew what I wanted, and I had it for a period of time but never realized. I simply love building products and owning every single decision of the process. I can spent countless hours thinking how to solve problems and implementing a solution that feels mine, that I can shape however I want.
I was doing exactly this when I was 16, I built a Discord bot for my friends server and more and more people started using it (precisely 168_575 discord servers now), and I vividly remember the curiosity, drive, adrenaline and joy I had while spending countless hours coding it, receiving my first donation, helping out the users and seeing the first heart warming reviews. And uni didn't help not even an inch in any part of this process.

After coming back from Fuerteventura and talking with my friends, of course I couldn't avoid the question "so when are you finishing uni? September?". It's hard to explain how good it feels to be able to say "I'm not finishing probably, but we'll see". I know what you are saying while reading this "ah dude it's just two exams just take them, get that degree and don't think about it anymore". To be completely fair, I would feel literally ashamed if I finished my degree, as it would mean not having the guts to make my own choices, which is the point of all of this. To explain this so that you understand what I mean, we gotta dive a bit deeper...

The quote I mentioned earlier about meeting other people is from the film Waking Life by Richard Linklater. That movie is fascinating, and it's thanks to it if I'm writing, and thinking, all of this.

WARNING: spoilers ahead, even though the film doesn't really have a real plot.

The film is centered around dreaming, with at its core:

Everything exists as an idea before it becomes reality, everything that happens in life, every action we take and every interaction, first happens inside our head, as an idea, and we then decide or not to engrave it in the records of time.
That's why day dreaming is so important, by doing that we are giving a chance to things to exist.
Parallel to those lines we got Sartre, an existentialism philosopher that bases its thinking on:

Existence precedes essence

For him, we exist in the first place no matter what, there is no destiny, it's us and our action that define our essence. We are completely free and to live a worthy life we gotta embrace the responsibility that comes from this freedom.
It enlightens me to think that responsibility is concrete. Even if we are 8 billion people on this planet, each decision creates a precedent, we are not victims of a concomitance of forces, it's us defining who we are.

When put into practice though, one thing usually hits you really quick: fear. Because freedom is scary, choosing implies responsibility and more than anything risk. Being autonomous is destabilizing. The solution, is to act despite uncertainty, which is inevitable.

It's when you assimilate these concepts fully and you embrace this freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, after realizing the absurdity of it all, that you start seeing all the paths open to you and consequently feel alive. And the best part of it, is that when you start acting with that mentality, it's a domino effect, you slowly trigger a chain of events which will lead you somewhere. I like to believe it's not really the where that matters, but the state of mind you are in. The joy and adrenaline that you feel from living your life fully, risking it to follow your instincts and desires, even in the most dull day-to-day scenarios, what's more worth it than that?

I like the concept of treating your life as a book, every day you add a few lines or a couple of pages to it. Then once in a while you go back, read it and ask yourself "is this worth reading?", am I thinking "why the heck is this guy not doing XYZ, it's just a book in the end so why is he that worried?"?. One night I was on the sofa of the coliving just chatting, and we ended up with an idea, asking whether it made sense or not: "the most appreciative and reverent way of living life, is to experience as much of it as possible: embrace chaos, feel every emotion, venture down risky and uncomfortable paths, explore the full potential and act fearlessly towards your desires in the face of its inherent meaninglessness."

As a side note, I think an autobiographic book about someone just always taking the risky and uncomfortable choice that more aligns with its instinct when in front of a decision, just for the sake of seeing what happens, would be a sick book.

Of course life has it's challenges, sometimes your freedom is really restricted by something or someone, shit happens and it can get real rough, but if I have the choice I'm putting time and sweat towards what I believe is best for me, so that at least, even if it goes bad, I wont have regrets or question myself about how it could have ended differently.

Coming back to less philosophical topics, if you are wondering, no I didn't drop my job and didn't yet drop uni either. I don't hate my job anymore, it actually allows me to have the freedom to experiment in my projects quite a lot, while for uni, I wanna first see if there is any interesting door it can open me, whether it is a master course, or an abroad experience in a place where it's hard to get into work-wise (like the USA).

It's really interesting although that during daylight these thoughts and concepts don't really cross our mind, and feel even dull. It seems to me that during the day it's so easy to forget all of this and don't act accordingly (or who knows, that it's not the point at all). Regardless, at least I got there, I finally see things for what they are and I'm happy, after years of feeling deep down this sense of sadness, I finally understood what caused it and I'm free from it.

The relief.