A Few of the Hits

It's been a fast few. Lots of things have filled the past months, from trips to toiling in the yard. Here we are at the end of another summer. Thankfully I've learned a few things, relearned really - not that there's nothing new under the sun, but the good ones keep coming back like Getting the Led Out on a classic rock station. Here's a few of the hits...

• There is no "free time". Whenever I think I'm going to get a block to just {insert aspiration here} I am quickly reminded that any free space will be filled by the stacks of need-to-dos that tower above us. Every day that I want to carve out I need to intentionally pause, pull, shift and shimmy away from the stacks into what I hope to do.
• As someone who has both struggled to avoid being defined by work, and craved the structure of work, it's hard to remember the point is purpose, not a job. I need to interrogate why I want to spend time driving a goal forward instead of letting the comfort of routine take me for a ride.
• The speed of learning has collapsed months into days, the speed of internalizing has not shifted. Facts are not knowledge; they are the bricks we use to build real actionable ideas. Just because I can consume white papers in a single sitting doesn't mean I can do anything useful with the insights. I need to focus on the cartography of where I am, and where it can lead me, not the disembodied islands of verities. The course must be plotted to sail.
• Apathy is real - with the speed of code generation it's become almost impossible to have a deep connection with what you're creating. The key for me has been to focus on dog-fooding. If what I'm creating is fun for me, I'll still be passionate about what I'm building.
• Time, and its passage is still my bane in the world of programming. Separate from the technical challenges of timekeeping, there is the abyss of representing time and motion that seems plausible to humans, and yet is skewed irrevocably from reality. Here the only option is to dance - it's an art not a science.

All in all it's been a fantastic summer - and now I'm ready for that shift. It's dark when I wake. It's cool in the evenings. We haven't brought in the outside cushions yet, but I'm ready for the next.