It's been feeling like I'm living a dual life again.
I feel like whenever I have a creative endeavor I want to do... like, a programming project, a song, a video, etc... I have to make an uncomfortable choice: do I package it for "normal" people, or do I share it with the people that I really care about most?
It doesn't really feel "safe" to me to share my full self with everyone. I really don't feel like I want potential employers or coworkers or family members to know about my orientation, or about the furry thing at all.
And then on the other hand, I don't really want to share my full name / identity publicly in the furry sphere either. So I get stuck in this weird middle ground. It usually ends up with me not sharing anything with anyone.
Besides the way I present projects though, it feels like it also causes me problems when I'm deciding how I spend my own time. I don't think it's fully rational, but to me it feels like I'm choosing between spending time for the sake of two different groups of people: either "soulless corporate people who don't care about me" or "online animal people who truly care about me". How would you rather spend your time - desperately scrambling to make yourself appealing to someone who probably would hate the core of what you are, or surrounded with people who really seem to care about you?
This isn't the full reality, though. I kinda hate that about psychology - you can project a reality, construct a narrative so strong that it sucks you under, and propels you wildly in some direction. Sometimes that can be a good thing - you can get passionately invested in something that provides value. For me, right now, I don't think I've got a good narrative.
I'm feeling so resentful about the things around me - about the place I live, about the tech people I want to impress, about the societal structures I'm a part of... and to be honest, it just makes me hate the entire idea of programming. It makes me want to throw my hands up and give up. I just want to lay in bed and let the world happen and not be a part of it.
I'm way too cynical now. I've become disconnected from the things that really brought me into programming in the first place. The reason I did any of this was because how genuinely passionate I was about contributing in some form to the internet, which I honestly feel is amazing. It got me through the roughest patches of my life, helped me find some of the most amazing people I've had the pleasure of knowing... and it's just always seemed so amazing to me that we get to have any of this. It's kinda similar to how I feel about air travel - it's completely absurd that we're doing this, that any of this works, and that it works so well and helps so many people.
I'm too preoccupied with this "silicon valley brogrammer" archetype I've constructed. That I have to be this hustly grindset kinda guy, seeking maximum profit and productivity with no other goals. Founding some soulless datamining startup or whatever after working exactly 1 year each at Google, Meta, and Amazon while bragging to everyone about being an "Ex-Googler". And you MUST do all of these things if you want to "make it".
I feel like I'm trying to force myself to match this idea. It feels like I'm trying to force myself to be someone I desperately do not want to be.
Is it possible to have it all? Can I try to retain some part of myself and still have a healthy career? Is it safe for me to stop hiding so much of who I am with the world, to be a weird queer internet dog who also programs stuff? to be one unified person?
I don't know. I still don't feel like it's safe. Everything feels kinda weird right now politically, and I've always really wanted to just be uncontroversial. I hope it's possible for me someday.