This has been a long time putting to keyboard; a thought that has brewed in the back of my mind for over a year now, but something only worthy of a “musings” label. One of the reasons its taken this long to commit even a comment on is that I have a basic problem of going from idea to commitment (ask my wife, she’ll vouch for that with a case history that is staggering).
It all started with the basic thought: I miss the person I used to be. Oh, I know, many get there, especially when you reach the end of your twenties. You remember the kind of person you were when you were a kid, even a teenager, then you realize how much real life bogged you down into a limited context that leaves you with very little time between work and sleep, and what little there is admittedly wasted on things like TV and your Playstation 2 (recent example for me would be Jak 3, not only a little too quick to beat but it ate the better part of all my free time for three days).
So I started thinking, why can’t I be that person again? And that’s where Self v.3 came from. If you consider through adolescence as v.1, your 20’s as v.2, then v.3 is the next logical step. What would I like to see in v.3? A rebirth of v.1 with the lessons learned in v.2. I’d like to see myself be literate again; I’d like to be able to end the day and look back and see something accomplished.
I’ve started to get that feeling lately with Gentoo, but I want more (don’t we all?). I have so many half baked ideas and projects lying around that I know with a little love and attention could actually work. But instead I sit on my duff and do nothing.
I want to quit my bad habits, become a better person, etc., etc.. I want a personal renascence, where there’s no need for a v.4 because it turns out v.3 was the pinacle of the person I could become. The key to this is, of course, actually following through, not putting this off with “well, when I write this tool it will make it easier for me to take care of this,” or setting a start time/date that isn’t the here and now.
At one point I actually sat down and wrote a list of the things I’d like to be able to accomplish in a day, then added in the time blocks for things I am unavoidably commited to already like work and commute (but not sleep), and ended up with a 26 hour day without any sign of rest in it. Nice approach, but I think I have to find a way to be more reasonable on what I want to accomplish.
Shoot, even writing this entry (and if you’ve noticed a discontinuity, here’s why) has taken me the better of a week and I don’t even think it addresses completely what I originally started out to say. I’ll try and revisit this again later, when my mind is clear, clock is empty, and brain cells are willing.