Artist Day at work?!?

I had to miss artist night on Tuesday this week because of various things going on in my life. I'm actually considering putting it on hold for the month of November because there is so much going on. I really enjoy it though, and it does give me a break from my normal routine. I also have some fun artist activities planned. For example, the 8-bit Mike project is coming up, and I am very excited for that.

This week's activity was a little unusual because it was related to work. You see, I used to really enjoy programming and I would stay up late at night to work on various projects. I haven't been able to do that very much lately. I have a lot of interruptions at work and I find that I can't handle the context switches very well. I've found it does take me about half an hour to really get back to something I was working on after an interruption. I would say I get interrupted at least every half hour when I'm at work. Obviously, there is a productivity issue there.

The other interesting thing that's been happening lately is that my eyes get really tired. I think it's from using the 30" cinema display I have at work. But I've found I can't look at computer screens very much after going home after work.

So for artist day this week I did something that should be normal but has not been typical for me in the last few months. On Saturday, I put my headphones on, closed my email and IM programs, and just did some of the programming that I needed to do for work.

I was surprised how much I could get done without all the distractions. It was actually really fun too. It helped me remember what I really like about programming and why I majored in computer science.

There are some artistic aspects to developing software. There is art behind the code itself that is difficult to describe to someone who doesn't program. However, when you see well-written code it can be refreshing - like looking at a piece of art. Also, when you finally run your program and everything works like it should there is a great feeling like you've created something and it is good. I think developing can be beautiful. My employees would attest to this - my favorite question to ask them when they tell me they've completed their projects is "Is it pretty?". I love it when it is.