Life's a puzzle

A few years ago, I was discussing some arcane computer architecture stuff with a friend of mine who is quite older than me. Towards the end of the discussion, he remarked that computer architecture ultimately boils down to solving puzzles, and however hard the problem, people end up devising solutions to them.

I had never thought about it that way before, and I've had it at the back of my mind ever since. It seems like most professions boil down to solving puzzles in their purest form. Note that I say "most" and not "all", since I imagine professions that are repetitive do not involve any puzzle solving at all.

Even these professions like medicine, law, engineering etc stop involving any puzzle solving once they become repetitive and there's nothing new to figure out. For example, a website designer might move out of the puzzle solving zone very quickly, I presume. Or a tailor, or even a doctor who's fixing up patients with known ailments, I presume.

To extend this theory, people who are good at their puzzle-solving professions should also be good at other professions that involve puzzle solving, discounting other factors like motivation, attitude and social skills. I've indeed met people who seem to be good at everything they pick up, maybe they're good at puzzle solving and manage to keep the other attributes (motivation, attitude, social skills) similar across various tasks. That is something I haven't done too well.

I'm an engineer by profession, and my job had involved a lot of puzzle solving, especially when I had just joined. But in my initial stint, I got out of that phase after a while, and things became repetitive. Plus I did not have much social interaction owing to the nature and location of my job. I had always imagined that I was a bit of an introvert and I would have no problems being alone, but I was wrong, and it really started getting to me after a while. So I ultimately moved, and now I'm in a very different and unfamiliar place which is at the other end of the spectrum, where the amount of puzzle solving I have to do on a daily basis is daunting, to say the least. But as long as it keeps me from settling into a comfort zone, it will be good I presume, even though it's tiring. Comfort zones are like coffins, as they say.

Before I sign off, there's another thing I remembered about living alone for too long. One tends to remember people the way they were at the time of the last meeting. Seeing them after a while is surprising, because often so much time has passed that they're nothing like you remember. Ok, that made no sense at all.