Through the Lens
Someone told me I didn’t know much about computers.
I was in school. I took that very personally.
We had a lesson on Bill Gates not long after. I went home and told my parents I had a plan. They were supportive. In retrospect, this was either tremendous faith or a complete failure to recognise what they were getting themselves into.
Either way – I was in.
One thing leads to another
Looking back, that lesson was essentially my Hogwarts letter. Except instead of an owl, it was a textbook. And instead of magic, it was a C compiler. Same energy, really.
I started learning on my own first – the way you do when something is more interesting than anyone has actually asked you to explore. My parents pointed me in the right direction, and things accelerated from there.
By 10th standard I was assembling computers at home. Not from a guide. Taking them apart, putting them back together, figuring out how each piece talked to the others.
By 11th standard I was writing C, C++, C# and Java – and predicting compiler errors in my head before running the code. I could play with Oracle and J2EE. I was completely convinced this was normal behaviour.
I want to be very clear: it was not.
I was, to put it plainly, a very specific type of person. Sheldon Cooper, would have recognised me immediately. We would have had very little to talk about socially. We would have understood each other completely.
I then chose Electronics and Communication for my degree. Because apparently I needed more of a challenge. I remained, somehow, excellent at the computer science papers but not so much in the actual ‘Electronics and Communication’. Some habits are simply impossible to break.
The shift nobody warns you about
Here is what happens, slowly and without any announcement, when you build a career in technology delivery.
You start out obsessed with mastering how technology works. Gradually – almost without noticing – the focus shifts to mastering how to deliver it for someone else. Both are valuable. Both matter.
But in Hogwarts terms: you go from being a student learning spells to working at the Ministry of Magic. Both involve magic. One involves considerably more paperwork.
The curiosity that got you in the door starts operating in a different gear. And quietly, the kid who was assembling computers in his bedroom takes a back seat.
Then AI arrived. Visor down. No brakes.
The AI boom landed and something switched.
Not just reading about it. Building with it. Getting hands into agent builds, orchestration patterns, the “wait – can it actually do that?” moments at 23:00 on a Wednesday for no professional reason whatsoever.
I was, in terms of pace and complete disregard for sensible limits, essentially Max Verstappen in a wet qualifying session. Flat out. Absolutely no intention of braking. Fully convinced I had it under control.
That school-days energy came back. That Hogwarts feeling of being a student again – learning for the love of it rather than managing the Ministry.
Here is what nobody tells you about the AI boom, though. The most compelling AI tools are, psychologically speaking, the Mirror of Erised. You keep coming back because the next reflection might be better. One build fails. The next one works beautifully. The one after that opens an entirely new question.
Just one more. Just one more. Just one more.
Dumbledore would have told me to walk away from that mirror.
I did not walk away.
The gym went first. Obviously.
The gym was, during this period, the Room of Requirement. It appeared when I needed it and, once I stopped needing it in my own mind, quietly ceased to appear at all.
A session rescheduled because a build ran long. A Saturday redirected because something interesting landed online. A routine slowly becoming “next week” – and then stopping being something I thought about much at all.
Studies suggest upwards of 80% of developers now experience burnout – and AI tools have a particular talent for keeping you at the desk past the point of usefulness. The push notifications from the gym card kept arriving. I kept dismissing them.
In retrospect, that was information.
The eyes had a stronger opinion
The eyes were less patient about it.
Months of low-level irritation that I managed by ignoring it. Not drops, not a visit anywhere. Just a general strategy of assuming things would sort themselves out.
What I needed, clearly, was Madam Pomfrey. What I got, as of yesterday, was an optician. Both would have fixed the problem. One would have done it considerably faster and possibly with more flair.
The optician looked at me. Then at her equipment. Then back at me. She delivered the verdict with the calm of someone who has seen considerably worse.
“You have dry eyes. Your tear glands aren’t keeping up with the demand.”
Direct. Unavoidable. No cushioning whatsoever. Ned Stark would have respected her directness. And unlike Ned Stark, she survived the scene.
Here is what prolonged screen time does: you blink significantly less than normal, which reduces the tear production that keeps eyes lubricated. One estimate puts dry eye prevalence at around 40% among moderate screen users, climbing towards 70% for those spending nine or more hours daily at a screen.
I was not logging moderate hours.
Twenty-something years of being genuinely obsessed with technology.
Forgot to blink.
Classic.
She recommended the 20-20-20 rule (along with eye drops. The brand apparently has a revolutionary delivery system called COMOD – who knew!): every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Followed by very few people who work in technology.
I was not among them. I’m working on it.
I love wearing sunglasses, even have a glass sunglasses box set for the current set. Now I’ll get one with prescription lenses!. Will be spending money now to try out all new features I can get in glasses with lenses.
What I’m actually doing about it
The gym is back on the calendar. Two or three times a week – not heroically, not to get flat abs, but consistently enough that the Room of Requirement has started appearing again.
The 20-20-20 timer is on my phone. It fires at inconvenient moments. This, I have come to understand, is entirely the point.
The curiosity is still very much here. That school-days energy – that Hogwarts feeling of learning because you genuinely cannot stop – is not something I’m trying to turn off. I’m just trying to make sure it doesn’t take out any more body parts in the process.
Even Hermione Granger took breaks. I think. (She had a Time-Turner, so the statistics are genuinely hard to verify. But the principle stands.)
AI will change how we work. It won’t change what we’re made of.
Maybe I’m not quite ready to become a robot just yet.
Well, the humans have better pop culture references.
I write about what actually happens when you take AI seriously – including the parts that do not make the keynotes. Follow me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mike-richard
Michael Richard Belavendiran is a 3× Microsoft FastTrack Recognised Solution Architect (FTRSA) and Senior Manager at a global consulting firm. He leads AI agent delivery using D365 CE and Power Platform, with a track record in enterprise programme recovery across more than 25 programmes globally.