Love and Work

Over the last few months my grandad and my grandma passed away. I was very lucky because when I was a child I spent huge amount of time with them. In a way, my experience of them shaped the person I became, and to me they both represent Love and Work.

I grew up spending my summers in my grandparents house. I wasn’t a big fancy house, just a normal house and we spent a lot of time playing games like board games and watching the television. In those summers, I discovered for the first time software development, as I spent some time doing some coding in my uncle’s Amstrad CPC 464, but I learnt much more important things that just coding.

My grandma was The Love. Until she was too old she was always trying to make everybody comfortable and happy. She enjoyed small pleasures like playing a Parchis game just before going to the bed, a game in which by the way very likely she would cheat even although she was playing with her two little grandsons. She was not the average old grandma, but on the contrary funny and dynamic. Just a word was needed for her to start doing something special for you, normally around a food or a game.

My grandad was The Work. I was just a little boy and he woke up very early, went to work, come back for lunch, and then back to work until the late evening, and he used to do this every day. My grandad didn’t have many opportunities, he only attend school for a few years, but he was very intelligent and managed to progress in life and create a very nice family (I know I’m not objective to judge, but it’s pretty nice ;) ). It wasn’t easy for him. He had to work very hard, in some days up to 20 hours, working so hard was his way of loving, because he had to be the provider.

I believe it was the combination of Love and Work that made my family successful, I think this is needed in all the aspects of life. You can work as hard as you could but if you don’t like what you are doing the result is not going to be good, and the opposite is also true, it doesn’t matter how much you love an idea if you don’t work on it, the result is not going to be good.

Work and Love is something that is deeply set in my own personality, I can’t be involved half way in anything, either I’m involved and I’m passionate about it or I’m not involved and I don’t care at all. This made me progress in my career so far, but it also made me feel unhappy when others don’t share the passion or the commitment. This is also challenging for the people around me, as it looks like I’m always looking for my next challenge, I can’t compromise with anything, and I need to have something in my mind to work on.

For me the journey is more important than the destination. At the end of the day, reaching the destination is just the beginning of a new journey.