Paul: Statement on the Statement
Months ago, at one of the many local nadirs of the unemployment/job hunt process, Molly came to me with a good idea. The idea was that I could write a kind of "artist's statement" about what's motivated my autodidactic plunge into software engineering. This would act both as a clarifying exercise and a piece of writing I could adapt and reuse for cover letters, statements of purpose, etc.
I immediately agreed that this was a good idea and that it would even be fun to do. After all, I've written a fair few medium to long things about software and technology and I'm full of fuckin' opinions about the subjects.
And now, months later, here I am writing a blog post speculating on why it's been so hard to actually do this.
The reality of a 2025 job hunt is almost perversely at odds with my capacity and aptitude as, like, a person. This isn't an excuse—it doesn't excuse me from anything—but it is observably true.
Part of the reason that it's true is the "Oh, what's the use?"-ness of the application grind, and as I have mentioned before, the feeling of pointlessness or impossibility makes it very hard for me to start doing something, even when I know the feeling is not grounded in reality.
Other things that are less impossible have gotten trapped, I think, in these doldrums. Chief among them is this Software Designer's statement, which I'm going to have to reclaim as a thing I want to write for its own sake, not as Part of the Job Hunt.
It occurs to me that it might also work as an introduction post for Susurrus. Well. There we go.