I'm in North Wales with my family. We've done our day trip for the day, and I'm tapping away on my laptop, checking Sentry logs, doing some bug fixes, progressing some new features and trying to understand marketing (I'm not sure I'll ever truly understand marketing). I'm in the garden, laptop literally on my lap, sat on a rusty fold-out chair, cold whiskey and coke next to me. And the pull of working, on something, is hard to resist.
I've never been a hobby person. I start plenty of things, but never really stick at them. I go a hundred miles an hour at a new interest, then usually after about three months I get bored, or move on to the next thing that grabs my attention. I've played tennis competitively. I've played badminton, table tennis, competed in pool tournaments. I'm obsessed with darts. I've tried data science. I've toured the UK playing in poker tournaments. I've tried living in Canada. None of it stuck.
Then came Sharon.
According to my wife, I'm having an affair.
Don't get me wrong I still make plenty of time for my kids. I still cook dinners, game with my boys, complete three walks a day with my two dogs, and of course there's the day job. But at a certain time of the day, I can feel the pull. The need to check on things. The need to create. I find it intoxicating.
I should state up front: my wife is very supportive. She likes seeing me happy, seeing me challenged and fulfilled. But it didn't stop her naming my MacBook Sharon.
Why this one stuck.
There's a pureness in creating something new, whether it's something never done before, something that solves a need, or something that improves on what's already there. It's a buzz. Understanding a problem, really digging deep into it, pulling at all the loose threads. It's unlike anything else I've done.
Every one of those old obsessions, I've realised, was me playing someone else's game. A ladder to climb, a ranking, an opponent. When the novelty wore off, there was nothing left behind. This is the first one that leaves something behind. When Sharon and I finish an evening, something exists that didn't exist that morning. It's still there the next day, and someone might even use it.
None of those other things ever came close to the satisfaction of what Sharon and I create together.
The affair only works because everyone's in on it.
I know how this reads, bloke on holiday, family inside, laptop in the garden. But the joke about Sharon is the opposite of a complaint. My family can see what this thing does for me, and they've made room for it, with a name and a running gag. The kids announcing "Daddy's with Sharon again!" isn't an accusation. It's them telling me it's fine to go.
If you're the same, a serial starter, a three-month wonder, someone who's never found the thing that holds I'd say keep starting things. One of them will eventually leave something behind, and that's the one that stays. And when you find it, hope the people around you name it something daft.
The ice has melted into the whiskey. Dinner is ready. One more deploy, and I'll be in.