My least favorite feeling in the world is uncertainty. It's a word my friend Gabe brought to the forefront of my mind this year and the reverberations from the first time he said it have not ceased since.
I was, professionally, born into an uncertain world. My first real programming job was in 2008 and that came to an end as the market melted down. This wasn't even some tragic, dramatic scene like what was likely happening outside of Bear Stearns at the same time with people walking out into familiar streets with an unknown future and a box full of their office trinkets. My job simply ceased to exist and there were no new jobs to be had. Even so, I was learning a lesson about life, debt, and accountability. I spent the next four years in the US Marine Corps repaying my debts and rebuilding my life. It was the best education I could have gotten in operating inside conditions you can't control.
I learned to play the cards in the hand I was dealt. Once the river hits, that's what you're betting on, and panicking in a losing position just guarantees the loss when the hand itself didn't. You also don't know what anyone else at the table is holding. They could all be sitting on worse. Sometimes you bet the odds, play your hand, and see where it goes, even if you lose it.
Uncertainty comes in many forms. I have uncertainty in my day job. I've had multiple projects and initiatives get disrupted at work. Any engineer, not just me, strives for some level of continuity and consistency at work. When people or processes disrupt that flow it feels like it disrupts life. The variables are just out of reach but visible. It's often the worst kind because of the small discernible distance between you and a potential solution. A lack of discernible progress is what drives the uncertainty into anxiety.
Then there's the existential variety of uncertainty. If you think even shallowly about the world we live in right now: a war with one of our greatest enemies, sudden changes in what have been consistent and predictable government policy, economic recession, rising inflation, and a job market losing its footing to artificial intelligence.
In this kind of world it is entirely reasonable to feel a great deal of uncertainty. At the root of uncertainty is a lack of confidence in your place in the world. We stand, at this moment, at the precipice of the singularity: a moment in time where nobody can reliably predict the future. Our entire future, one millennials have learned to navigate on their toes, is now wading into the thick of the event horizon.
Could I be drafted into another war? Will my job and livelihood be taken away from me? I have so much more to lose now compared to when I was a young adult. Will I watch my friends have their livelihoods taken away from them? Will my friends have to go to war? It's all so reminiscent of the past.
How am I dealing with it? I pick up the phone and call my friends. I let them remind me of my place in their world. I talk to my partner, and let her remind me of her place in mine. I know that sounds small against all of that, but when I hear from my friends I am reminded that in the vastness of all of this, I still have meaning and purpose.
I also try to remember that the most uncertain of moments in my life are also the times when I've shone the most; I've learned to land on my feet, to reinvent myself, and to build my place where one did not exist. This is simply not my end, or yours.