Glerk!

I had trouble sleeping last night, and didn't fall asleep until something like 6:00 am. Thus, sleeping in until 11:00 am doesn't really count as 'sleeping in'. In fact, I'm drinking an actual, caffinated double-esspresso now, in order to be alert enough to do the technical jiggery-pokery needed to repair Webigail, the mail/web server today.

If all goes according to plan, we'll be installing a new pair of hard drives and a DVD burner into her today. Most of the work will be routine, but SOME of it is going to get complicated, especially if we don't want to lose any recoverable data from the bad drive.

Early 'Morning' Introspection.

I've always had a fascination with the way the world works, with the broadest possible definition of 'world'. Its why my original love was particle physics, not computers. I want to know what the underlying strata of reality are. Going into computers was based as much on a pragmatic assessment of the the relative profitability of the two career paths (although I sometimes wonder if I made the right choice) as it was on the fact that I seem to be really GOOD at computers. (After all, there was never any evidence that I wasn't equally good at particle physics).

Lately though I've been finding computers and programming to be kinda... boring. After 20 years I find it hard to get excited about a new project. Oh, I still enjoy the zen-like feeling of flow when I'm immersed in the logic of some application, and the sense that I really do understand what all the bits are for, and how they interact. Its just that I used to have enough enthusiasm at the beginning of a project to get me over the boring set-up stage where you're just arranging your tools, selecting and designing libraries, figuring out what the documentation will need to say, and writing the scaffolding of functions that everything will hang from. Now I find it all to be a barrier, especially for my own projects. (Somehow, knowing that someone else is relying upon me to get my part of the job done is enough incentive.)

I also find that I've kinda lost the ability to churn out something 'quick and dirty'. I've had too many bad experiences with having to maintain quick-and-dirty code to feel good about designing or writing it. Yet, very often, its the ideal way to get a project off the ground fast enough to engage my enthusiasm. If I know that a quick-and-dirty version is supposed to be discarded and replaced right away, it should be easier to convince myself to write one, but again, I've had too many experiences where a pointy-haired boss has decided that the throw-away version was good enough and we've gone to production with it. So, I find I have these learned habits that are supposed to protect me from the PHB's, that just get in the way when I'm my own boss.

As a result, I've got dozens of ideas for computer programming projects, some of which I might find quite lucrative, but which I find it very hard to get started on.

Meanwhile, I've been finding my interests in other of my talents to be growing. I enjoy writing and even in high school I imagined that I had a book or two in me that wanted to get out. Despite the environment in which it was done, I actually found I was really enjoying the technical writing I did for my last company. It was a change of pace and people were actively praising the work I was doing. I don't know when the last time I got a 'good job!' comment from someone about a tricky bit of programming I've done, but I heard that regularly when I was doing tech writing.

I've also been thinking seriously about other ways to redirect my writing. I've even gone so far as to fill up my friends list with folks who love to write, as a subtle way to encourage me. I have plans for a book on Xenobiology I would really love to produce, even if it would require daunting amounts of research to get it to a level I was happy with. I would also love to write articles on the future of technology and I've been heading in that direction with my essays on Open Source Ideas and 21st Century Business Practices.

That brings up another thing that seems to have changed: I'm far more interested in the soft sciences now than I ever was before. I used to think that I would never want a management job, but now I know that I can enjoy that. I've started thinking about social interaction and social dynamics. I've even started being interested in Economics, of all things.

Maybe its a function of the fact that I'm not as shy and introverted as I once was. I'm still far from being an extrovert, but at least now I can look forward to meeting new people, and not feel dread.

All this is starting to show up in my writing too; my NaNoWriMo novel is going to be a bit of a stretch for me, as its going to be techno-fantastic erotica/porn. The reason for that is that I want to stretch myself. Writing about human relationships on the intimate level will be quite a stretch for me indeed. I'm not good at making myself see things from radically different viewpoints, and my novel idea is supposed to force me to do just that. At the same time, I'm curious about the interactions of people and advanced technology and how that relates to the entire question of what it is to be human, and so there will be some of that, as well.

I don't actually expect the novel to be readable when I'm done. I think its too much outside my comfort zones for it to be that, but I hope to learn a lot while writing it, and after all, NaNoWriMo is about producing a draft, not a finished product.