Time to start building

11 Jan 2025·6 min read

Despite loving to fix and optimize things from a young age, I have an abyssmal rate of creating new things. And I have been ashamed ever since I am aware of it. Why you might ask? Well, it is puzzling for me too.

If you have been through the typical Asian school curriculum (like I did for 16 years), you probably would understand when I said it doesn’t really leave much room for hobby if you want to be a top performer. This is especially more so for Vietnam, where one major exam tends to decide the “fate” of your professional carreer. Or at least, that is how the common narrative goes.

It is no secret that I take pride in thriving in that system. Partially because who wouldn’t feel proud being a high achiever. But mainly because it is the sort of gruelsome rat race that can leave you traumatic years down the road. The kind that makes you wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, at age 24, thinking you have a major exam tomorrow, and you are doomed with no preparation. It doesn’t help that your success is tied closely to your family honor and reputation. I woudln’t be surprised if I have accidentally developed some form of PTSD from the whole ordeal. So I think I deserved to feel proud, not just surviving but thriving in that environment. But, at what cost?

I starts thinking about this more intensely after I read PG’s “A Project of One’s Own”.

Instead of telling kids that their treehouses could be on the path to the work they do as adults, we tell them the path goes through school. And unfortunately schoolwork tends to be very different from working on projects of one’s own. It’s usually neither a project, nor one’s own. So as school gets more serious, working on projects of one’s own is something that survives, if at all, as a thin thread off to the side.

I still remember the early days when I learned how to make my own game. I think it is quite common, if not cliche, for an enigneer to get their passion first ignited through trying to make their own games. I remember being so obssessed with it that I would clear all of my homework within the first 20 minutes after waking up from my primary school mandatory nap, just so I can spend more time building game at home. Soon, as with most Asian mothers, my mom would “supplement” my free time with more tuition and homework. It was a fun time, although shortlived.

And our customs make it harder. We treat “playing” and “hobbies” as qualitatively different from “work”. It’s not clear to a kid building a treehouse that there’s a direct (though long) route from that to architecture or engineering.

It didn’t get much better when I get to middle school. I joined my school IT club, which geared more toward preparing you for informatic competitions than to build cool things with computer, and learned my first programming language: Turbo Pascal. I remember the magical moment of seeing a Chrismas tree being programatically printed to a terminal from my code. I thought to myself this was it: the power of creation. But once again, my enthusiasm was cut short. I have a national exam to prepare for and IT was not my “specialty”. Math was. Don’t get me wrong, I like math. The problem is to perform well enough to get into top highschool in math, you would virtually have no time for anything else other than to eat and sleep. So I have no choice but to stop building thing and focus on my education.

At this point, you probably have realised that I am probably is the extreme scenario of what PG mentioned in his essay. And the worst thing is: nothing is left to the side for me, not even a single thread.

After middle school, I achieve pseudo-independent on a scholarship to Singapore. Something interesting happens. I am introduced to the concept of Co-Curricular Activities (CCA). It is foreign that students get to do something other than just study after school. It would have been of great benefit to me if I wasn’t rejected from the school robotic club because I couldn’t drive their robots, blind, through a tube. In my defense, that was the first time I have ever controlled a robot, not to mention to drive it blind through a tube. Something that still confused me till this day. Why would reject a student away from joining in something they have interest in because of some arbitrary thing like that test? But I digress. So I spent my time, once again, with nothing to do after school except for studying.

It is not until university that I rediscovered my passion for programming and building once again. But by that time, I have spent so long not practicing my creation muscle that it tooks me awhile to get up to speed. So while I have a decent amount of projects under my belt during my university time, it is nowhere near the amount that I would want it to be. If you ask me what was the thing that I take most pride in, I would not be able to answer that question truthfully. Because they are more often than not, a product from external pressure, not from within. And that left me feel a sense of shame and regret. I think about all the could have and what not, and a sense of dread that I might have wasted all of my time during what might have been the freest period of my life.

So now that I have graduated, what is next? I have realised that, ultimately, what I want is to train that creation muscle extensively. To become so good, that others can’t ignore me. To grow on my own terms, and not because of some other external pressure. And to finally make something truly of my own, something that I can be proud of.

If the best time to start is yesterday, then the next best time is today. And that is what I am going to do. If I dedicate myself everyday to advance my project a few lines of code at a time, I figure sooner or later, I would have something to show for it. I am looking forward to what I will build and learn in the next few months. It is time to start building!

I will make sure to document everything that I learn along the way, as a way to be accountable for my own learning. So if you are interested, feel free to add my blog to your RSS feed! Your support is always greatly appreciated!