What if the grass is greener?

Most of the times it's not. We want something that we don't have, but we are blind to the downsides of whatever that thing is.

Oh, I don't like the weather here in SF — let me move somewhere warm and sunny! I'm not thinking about the bugs, the sweating in your car, the fatigue from the sun. Maybe a warm, sunnier place is what I want and is “greener” but it's not perfect — it will have problems and challenges that are unique to that environment.

I think about this for jobs too, for becoming a full time musician. Seems romantic — better to be developing your musical craft than sitting at a desk all day, right? Let's not forget the need to find a product market fit with your music to bring home money to live on. I realized I'd probably have to teach music in order to live off of it (some of the best players I know do this). I'm not a huge fan of teaching guitar — I could see teaching composition at a university level to be very rewarding. But getting there is its own grind — and the university positions out there are so few.

I read a thread on Reddit today where a software engineer was complaining about the difficulties of his job, specifically the exhausting nature of learning new technologies to keep relevant. He went on to romanticize trade work like plumbing — the idea here being that you put in a daily grind, but you're not having to constantly relearn your craft to stay relevant.

Most of the comments went on the say the grass is not greener. It's way harder to be a tradesperson — dealing with the elements, physical labor, and other tradeoffs that this engineer may not have considered.

Software is a great way to make money. But I know a lot of folks who are really unfulfilled by it.