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8 years ago I graduated with a bachelors degree in pure math and theoretical physics. 2 years later I settled down and decided to just become a software engineer building CRUD apps. Since graduating I've consistently looked for a job that explicitly had software and pure math requirements, but I've continuously come up short.

In theory, I think two good avenues for you to check out would be: 1) building physics and game engines at a company like Unity; 2) building the knowledge engine behind something like WolframAlpha/Mathematica. It's possible you'll need graduate school experience to be competitive for these jobs.

I'd guess that no matter what you're going to end up doing some kind of programming. I don't think formal education is required for this.

This morning I started to stir when my Casper Glow light turned on. But what really got me out of bed was when I heard the faint gurgle of my timed coffee machine auto brewing the first cup of the day.

There's no surfing in BC ;)

You make a great point about finding remote work. I lived in the Victoria area before I left Canada and found that a lot of my peers worked remotely for US-based companies. During the pandemic, some were even able to get a US market rate salary instead of being paid based on the Victoria location. This made living in Victoria much more manageable.

Canadian software engineer here. About a year ago I moved away from Canada specifically because cost of living was too high compared to Canadian market-rate salaries in the software industry. Many of my Canadian peers have done the same.

Canada is a wonderful place with some of the best nature and some really lovely cities, but I would not move there to improve my financial situation.

100% really hope Andrew Jervis is able to keep his show going. So much of the music that I keep coming back to is music that I discovered through his show!

Another vote for bandcamp. Definitely higher effort, but also higher reward in my opinion. One of my favourite things to do is sit on the sofa with my headphones on and actively listen to a few new bandcamp discoveries. It's really fun finding a new musician deep down a rabbit hole and having to try to decide for myself whether this is good music that I want to listen to again. Sometimes it's not, and that makes this method more time consuming, but I've also found most of my favourite musicians using this method.

Another great source is the Bandcamp Weekly with Andrew Jervis. If you're looking for something curated that is a little less effort, this is a great option.

> Office Space, Fight Club, American Beauty, and I Heart Huckabees satirized the dreary emptiness of white collar life. Didn’t my coworkers realize how ridiculous it sounds to use this jargon?

Fight Club had an enormous influence on me during my teenage years. It would kill the younger version of myself to learn the kind of white collar environment I operate in every day.

On one hand, Corpspeak is one of the most consistent forces of office life that beats the dying young punk voice that still whispers to me from time to time. Why don't we all just quit the tip-toeing and cut to the heart of each interaction? This way we would all be acting in our most authentic form. This would be a hardcore way to build something great together.

On the other hand, as the author describes, Corpspeak allows me to gloss over any bad feelings that may be felt or insinuated by myself or my colleagues. Although it feels inauthentic and may increase existential dread if pondered too closely, this "glossing over of feelings" makes the job less tiring, and enables me to show up for 40 hours, week after week. It also leaves me with tons of energy leftover to live the other 128 on my own terms — as long as I don't think too deeply about it all.

I completed a four-year honours level program at a research university. Math has always been one of my biggest passions, but I wanted some real world work experience before heading into grad school.

Fast-forward four years: I now work in software and, as others have said, I have tried and failed to find anyone who cares that I have studied high-level pure math/theoretical physics. So if I ever want back, it would be purely out of passion, not for any professional gains.

I have considered going back just to fulfill the passion side, but right now that passion does not outweigh the burden of potentially going without an income and paying out of savings to support myself and my family while I get a graduate degree, and I doubt that it ever will. I've done a lot of work to make peace with this fact of life. I have a lot of other passions, and I focus on those instead.

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

I'm also getting a timeout. Your mirror worked for me.