Breaking the Silence
Since it appears that I still don’t have anything of value to impart upon this place that to me feels too pure for anything that I might say, as if my thoughts would somehow leave a stain upon this cathedral where only higher ideals are permitted, I suppose the best I can do is get over that and instead just put out some flow-of-consciousness style block of text and hope that something of value comes out of that.
This
Something that I find detrimental with my current experience as a programmer is that I find it hard to focus on a single project for a prolonged period of time. Perhaps it is just my inner perfectionist that provides discouragement when attempting to work on a somewhat menial project with a limited audience, but nonetheless b3 has also fallen by the wayside as something that neither I nor anyone else will use much, hence all the progress appears to been halted.
While I do on occasion find something I want to share, most of which happens to be links, it doesn’t help that the format of this blog is not particularly suited for that. I did have plans to make b3 work with more than one type of post but I guess I couldn’t exert enough pressure upon myself to get that done. So the alternative would be to alter my workflow and create a new place and tool for posting more free-flowing content.
If some tools for solving a certain problem already exist, but you find them only partially unfit for your workflow, then one might encounter the problem that the reward of doing this is inversely proportional to the delta between your ideal workflow and the one facilitated by those tools. If the mismatch results only in mild chafing, it’s unlikely that creating a new tool from scratch, especially if this new tool takes a lot of effort to create, will feel particularly good after you’ve done it, especially considering that this newly-created tool might not ever get much of an audience, and you might find losing interest in it as well.[1] This might be one of the reasons why I find it hard to work on anything really.
This might seem like an overly pessimistic position to take, and I’ll be the first to admit that it indeed is so, but I don’t think anything that other people suggest can help fight your subconscious which inherently doubts the success of anything that one might ever attempt. I can only admire those who possess the enthusiasm to hop onto working on new projects and be within a constant cycle of prototyping, abandoning anything that doesn’t look like it has the potential to be successful and not caring about that too much.
Hence why I’ve been feeling somewhat stuck recently. Even if I happen to have ideas, those don’t tend to be long-lived as I find all the reasons why it’s not worth putting work into making them come to life. Some of my workflows are slightly chafing but nothing’s so dire that it demands a new tool to be created. Yet it’s not ideal, and every time I interact with a tool that I know I could make better it puts me off just a little.
It’s similar with long-form writing for which this blog was intended. I don’t feel like I have as many opinions as I once did, which is a whole problem unto itself.
Next
Similarly, even though I want to get out the things I want to do in the near future, I feel like that’s actually detrimental to the possibility of me actually doing them. I believe it was CGP Grey who said something to the effect of this:[2] “when you share with others that you’re working on a thing, your brain gets the satisfaction of feeling like you’re doing productive work on the thing and you feel less inclined to actually do the thing.” This I find doubly true with myself, so I’m wary of sharing anything about my potential current or future projects with others because that seems to be the most surefire way to have them instead die prematurely.
So I won’t. Sorry.
Edit: A small project has been put into action. Do follow that, and do get in touch with any feedback you might have.
Miscellaneous
One of the goals I’ve set for myself is to read more books. Therefore I wanted to share a single recommendation for now: “Because Internet” by Gretchen McCulloch. I got it on Tom Scott’s recommendation and I haven’t regretted it the least so far.
End
Do get in touch with any comments.