Joe – I am simultaneously amused, grateful, and mildly “frustrated” (to use your word) that you posed these questions to me at the end of your blog this week. I’ll start with the last one and work backwards: my frustration stems from you forcing me to reflect on this question – “was it pleasurable?” – at all (even though that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, right)? I guess this is a weirdly meta moment; I’m reflecting on what it feels like to reflect. Theoretically I would like to finish the coding, consider it done, and not have to think about it anymore. But not only am I required to write this post, but even more pointedly, I’m now forced to think about a moment (“a fierce determination, fed in part by frustration”) that you noticed but I didn’t even consider. Was coding this afternoon pleasurable? To be honest, I can’t even tell you. I was indeed so determined on figuring the damn thing out that I can’t say I was very much aware of my feelings at all. So now the question becomes, is it pleasurable to think about a moment of total non-thinking?

This is a hard one, and for this, I am grateful. Because now I can spend the rest of my blog post trying to figure this out. Let’s put it this way: when I’m reading, for instance, I feel extremely attuned to what I am thinking and feeling in the moment. But when I’m coding, the feeling always comes after the fact, and sometimes, not at all. And what’s most frustrating is that I don’t think I could have gotten any posterior feeling of relief/accomplishment/whatever if you and Kelly and Aden weren’t in the room. It’s not just about validation; I can feel things if I’m alone with a book. But what’s comforting is that I know everyone in the room has had the same feelings of frustration, even if we’re not talking about it in the moment. But that nonverbal dissatisfaction is kind of weird, right? It’s obviously there, and we have to talk about it later on, at least via blog. But then there’s also some discomfort in not knowing where that sense of irritation is directed. Is it at the machine or at the human? Are we all annoyed at the computer? Are you annoyed because you’ve already figured this out? Are Kelly and Aden annoyed with me because I was the one who suggested we stop at 1:15 and it’s now 2:20?

Lastly – I’m amused because 1) I think you’re trying to be funny and 2) because of course coding is not pleasurable. It’s not pleasurable to really suck at something. But I’ll try to end optimistically - with Kelly’s epiphany. Our array of balls was “stuck” behind Keyed Up Ball at the center. We’d see them for a brief second before they’d disappear. Kelly realized that because all the balls were in the middle, they would all go away pretty much immediately, that is, because told them to. We had after all, with Hassan, correctly written the function for them to disappear when they touched Keyed Up Ball. If all the balls were touching right away, they would obviously all disappear right away. So we moved Keyed Up Ball. And it was awesome.