An Existential Crisis and Some Other Things
By: Arvind Sriram Prabakar
Tags: Pc Building, Existential Crises, Computers

Without acknowledging the apocalypse, I would assume that having enough free time to literally do anything around the house would prompt us to pick up and do those things. For people with the right motivation, this would mean learning a new hobby, tending to activities inside the house, dealing with personal projects and perhaps most importantly, embarking on artistic endeavors.

Here is the thing though; these activities come with the requirement that the drive should have existed before all of this started. Inspiration does not come down upon us like magic. It is certainly true for me and as both the protagonist and sometimes antagonist of my own reality, I have some observations about the state of my world.

Now there is an excuse harped around when questioned about doing things that are not just the bare minimum.

This excuse is, “Oh but I’m so busy all the time and I have no free time”.

There are two kinds of people that are associated with this excuse.

The genuine ones are those that truly cannot take a moment outside of their daily routine to tend to these things. Parents with young children, young adults working their asses of to get better grades at school, people working multiple jobs, people who have other people dependent on them to get through their day and so on and so forth.

The second category is people like me who use time as a blanket excuse to not get things done that are not bare minimum. The only way to get around this, in my opinion, is to hardcode what bare minimum means on a daily basis.

The point being the second kind was not ready to give up on that excuse when the new status quo became staying at home.

Naturally, the odds of an existential crisis setting in when living in a situation without a change of scenery is as good as finding kids playing street cricket in India.

So, let me bullshit through this while I also gloat about my minor accomplishments. I watch a YouTube channel which is basically computer hardware porn for tech enthusiasts. Discovering that channel reignited my idea of wanting to build a gaming computer. A trip to an amazing electronics store and a couple of shady deals on eBay later, I was equipped with all my components and put together my own PC. One of the eBay deals was shady because I ordered a pack of three computer case fans and they arrived one after the other in individual packages.

This was one personal project accomplished. But wait, there is more; along this, an observation can also be made about how I pick up personal projects but never follow through with them even though I start them with such amazing enthusiasm. Case in point and a very cheeky self-aware observation, my writing. Am I writing enough? No. Do I feel bad about it? Yes. Am I doing anything actively to fix it? Also no.

The next projects involve some RaspberryPi computer boards, a network switch, 35ft of ethernet cables and some poor external hard drives. A network storage solution was birthed out of wildly googling multiple keywords and piecing together information from all those sources to setup a cardboard box in the corner of the apartment with holes cut out to plug things into the things that are kept inside that box. It works and now I am two drives away from becoming a data and by extension an electronics hoarder.

The other RaspberryPi serves as a network wider ad-blocker because installing ad-blockers on individual devices is so 2014.

I did promise you an existential crisis. After putting together all these computer things I wondered if I should have picked a different major in college. Now, the passage of time is a very weird concept for our generation. I still catch myself thinking that they 80s were 20 years ago. The point being that switching majors was a decision that I should have made in 2010. That ship has sailed, docked and been torn apart to make other ships I would assume.

Did I get through my personal projects because inspiration took hold of me? Unlikely.

Were the personal projects a way to take my focus of another looming existential crisis? Likely.

Will I continue my pursuit of personal projects in this uncertain time? You should know me enough to know that I probably will not.

Let me know what you think about this.