One of the greatest challenges I’ve faced in my academic and professional career (however brief) has been independent ingenuity. It stares me in the face as I read HackNews articles and peers’ blogs. These Computer Scientists, Software Engineers, and Data Scientists are able to come up with some sort of interesting project and produce a legitimate product or meaningful analysis. I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t say I was envious of their creative insight.

Even in my job, I find that I am good at solving problems. Point out something that needs to be done or improved/updated/etc. and I can output some result. However, without that guidance I often feel lost.

I’ve tried doing some independent “weekend projects” on my own, but none of them ever get finished - either due to lack of interest in the project itself or due to the daunting nature of it. By no means have I even produced a thought of some novel work. Basically my list of projects (which remains written on a whiteboard in my living room) consists of:

  • (Pure) Python DBMS (tk frontend, sqlalchemy backend)
    • inspired by my sub-par opinion of sql-workbench for redshift
    • and love for python with the curiosity of “is this possible?”
  • Remotely accessible media server
    • so that I can access my digital media and academic library remotely without reliance on significant cloud storage
  • Websites
    • this one, and stadther.net (currently a redirect here)

All these projects, while useful (to me), seem very lackluster; thus diminishing my motivation.

I’ve been reassured by my mentors and superiors that inspiration and insight come with experience, but of course it’s easy to be a doubting Thomas.

One day (I hope), I’ll look back to this and things will click. However, until that day I’ll continue seeking inspiration.