tangentalizingly delicious

Monday December 29, 2008

So given that this is something of a reboot of the blog I’ll attempt to do the whole personal overview sort of thing. I’m not very good at it and I’m always unhappy with the way I end up describing myself, but then that’s also sort of the purpose of the blog: To describe myself in terrifically banal detail.

So these days I’m calling myself three things: A father, a husband and a programmer.

Harvey was born on August 25, 2006, which as of this writing puts him just shy of 2.5 years old. He’s pretty cool, I like him a lot. I could talk about him in great detail (and do on occasion!) but for now I’m just going to say that fatherhood is everything I expected it to be, times 10. Funner, harder, easier, suckier, greater and worse. Immeasurably more good than bad, but to suggest there isn’t any bad would be idiotic (and I’m trying to cut back on my idiocy these days).

I got married on September 25, 2004 to a truly excellent person, my wife Jen. When we met I bragged to friends about how she had more video games than I did, and just the other week we were both wrong in exactly the same way about the year we got married (we both argued pretty strenuously to my sister, who knew better, that we were wed in 2005). I couldn’t ask for anything more in a wife than what I have.

I’m not really pleased with calling myself a programmer, but it encompasses what I do for a living reasonably well. It doesn’t encompass the greater details of what I think about and what I care deeply about and what I want to do with my professional life, but I don’t think that there’s a single word that would do so for anyone, so for now I’m a programmer.

I like to make software and hope one day to make great software. These days I’m focusing on the detail levels of my craft, trying to become better at the concepts and practices of software engineering and to a lesser degree computer science.

My goal is to start my own company, and in fact I have done so. It just isn’t actually doing anything. The archives of this blog are filled with pontifications about theories of management, ideas for companies and attempts to make something work. The archives of this nature will grow.

I have been thinking lately that I am going to start calling myself a serial failer, which is a different thing than a serial failure. It is sort of like a serial entrepreneur but they tend to earn their title through success and I don’t think I’ve failed enough to learn how to be successful. In terms of personal development what I am working towards most is being comfortable in getting things wrong and in being patient with slow progress.

The thing is, for most of my life I’ve sort of embodied a mindset that if something can’t be done right then it shouldn’t be done at all. That is the thing I am most interested in changing about myself. It is an easy way to make an excuse and I am tired of excuses. I am attempting to internalize the reality that nothing pops into existence wholly formed and that means actually taking steps. Taking chances. Failing.

Which is why, even though I don’t think this is a complete (or even good) description of me, I am going ahead and writing this blather. To attempt is to make progress.