Dearth

As you might have noticed (or not noticed, where you normally would), I’m getting pretty sloppy at Xing this blog.

Updating? I’ve quit using this as a way to keep my friends and family up to date. My life is not that exiting, and I would much rather hoard all the good stories for the next exchange at the local bar when we meet up.

Expanding? That would imply I am trying to make a finished product. I think the posts here are eclectic and disconnected enough not to warrant a finished product. It would make sense if I could use the pieces here to make a composition later, but actually everything here is already a composition. I steal shamelessly from my private life, the lives of others, material in the public domain and my random imagination. I doubt this is a catalogue for later, as a catalogue implies some sort of order.

Maintaining? About a year and a half ago I figured out that as I posted only once in a blue moon about my private life, I might as well hijack this place for whenever I felt I had something that I wanted to write about. Both for the pleasure of it, and practice. 10000 hours before you master something, that story. But of course I keep in mind that this thing is read.

Yes, read it again. It sounds really obvious, but it’s something I’ve learned through failing a lot.. If I might be pedantic  for a minute and give you some advice: always read something you’ve written. Not just paragraph by paragraph, read the whole thing when you’re finished. Maybe even aloud. You’ll be surprised,  I promise.

Anyway, there is still the matter of “saying” whatever it was I wanted to say when I started out. I’ve been busy coding my side project, and some sloppy assessments made me have a hard and a bit demotivating time. Whenever I’m not productive I have the reflex of spending more time on it, as a way to catch up on my expected output. I’m considering this is probably exactly the wrong thing to do (in the fantasy land of no deadlines or external interactions). At any point in your life, you will be good at something, and bad at some other thing. Try to do the thing you’re actually good at at that time. In programming, the slowest part of the work is most often your brain. An hour spend working concentrated and motivated is worth a week of juggling coding and obsessively checking the latest news on-line.  And it seems a waste of time to actually do this, just as it seems a waste of time to be watching a re-run Woody Allen when I feel sharp. Even if it’s Saturday night.

Enough about me. How are you?