where do you see yourself in five years?

some people know exactly what they want and just climb the corporate latter with a clear goal or go deep into a very narrow academic research area, while others find difficult to set their path on a stone. maybe there was a time when this question made sense, but nowadays, it seems that we are just surviving a series of historical events while having to work and pay the bills. probably, no 5-year plan would have prepared me to endure a pandemic and the worst floods my home state has ever experienced.

as the year gets close to its end, people start wrapping up their accomplishments, sometimes presented and curated by an ai algorithm from a music streaming company that owns your data. people also start their goals lists, planning a brand-new year of learning, good habits and change.

thinking about this year, i can only relate to one of my favorite pink floyd songs of all time:

and then one day you find
ten years have got behind you
no one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun

considering my website, you probably noted that i do some stuff that's not intrinsically related. qa, photography, some games, and now this blog. i am a good qa, an enthusiast photographer, an amateur solo game developer, a dilettante, a jack of some trades, a duck.

a duck can walk, fly and swim. it does all those things, but poorly. what if it could do all those things with mastery? it would be a polymath. so, from duck to polymath, where am i?

when i was a kid, my dream was to become a scientist/inventor. i had this idea of being this lonely genius in a lab, creating amazing machines and making scientific discoveries. my favorite class was "science", until it got divided into biology, chemistry, and physics. when the opportunity appeared, i would tear my toys apart and try to rebuild it in a different way. i had a chemistry set, a microscope, lots of books and cd-roms full of information about history and science. one of these books was called "the curious guide" and it made me identify as a curious person. 30 years later, i'm still like that, but not with the same intensity. i dream of being a leonardo da vinci, but i'm more like a duck.

the funny thing is that, as an adult, i realized that learning is difficult. i always thought i liked to learn, but i'm no philomath. i like quick results and feedback, so digital photography works like a charm. there's a click and the image is right in front of you. some quick editing and you're done. you learn, you move on to the next image. but true learning requires too much effort, and if your interest fluctuate regularly among too many different fields, it's obvious that things will become very difficult, and you will give up unless there's a lot of motivation.

that's what i'm looking for 2025: motivation to step away from being a duck.

it's almost impossible to become a polymath during our times, but we need some utopia so we keep walking forward.

i'll see you in twenty-five years.