Secret Wishes

I am pretty much a nerd and I'm okay with that. However, that status was elevated to geek in college when I got my CIS degree. Congratulations, yeah for me, I'm a geek. I had one friend that kindly welcomed me every day in one of our accounting classes with, "What's up, dork!" I remember in my CIS cap course my Senior year the teacher had us share why we chose to pursue a CIS degree and my response was, "For fun." The only response I found more uncommon than that was a classmate who was a concert pianist and chose to get his CIS degree as a backup. I knew all along it was much more likely I'd use my accounting degree to build my career because let's face it, very good IT people have an innate quality that I don't. They were computer geniuses before ever opening up a book. I knew a future in accounting for me was much more promising than something relating to CIS.

Fast forward three and a half years (that's right, I'm old)... My bedroom is in need of some serious de-junking. Several times, I have tried to get rid of my programming books and I can't. I secretly wish I still coded because I miss it. Getting a program to work was like solving an incredibly intense math problem, only the results were visual, so even more gratifying. I still have every book I used and every project I turned in. The books were always close to $100 so at one point this stack of books was worth about $500-$600 (like many things related to technology, they were often outdated by the time the semester was over, unfortunately). I can't even begin to describe how many hundreds of hours I spent on my projects. Some only took 10-15 hours, but some took 40-50 hours. I could almost count on an all-nighter the night before a project was due. It's as if I feel like I will lose a little piece of my identity if I get rid of these books, a piece that very few people know about, which is why I guess I think it's even more important to hang onto. I'm strangely sad knowing I will most likely NEVER again open these books. Additionally, I may never write another program ever again. Even if I did get back into it, I would be so far behind because I haven't kept up on it over the years. The first language I learned was C++, then Java. I also learned HTML, XML and SQL, but Java was huge when I was in school. My Senior year was the last year ASU was teaching any Java, so by the time I graduated even that was outdated. So, why do I keep these bulky books that take up space and collect dust? And that's where you come in, to give me moral support and encourage me to get rid of them. Tell me I won't be less of a person if I never write another program in my life and it will be okay. Or, tell me there is a club for amateur geeks that write simple programs for fun... that would be even better!