Here in the USA, Thanksgiving is in just two days. There are a lot of things I am thankful for this year. My work continues to be interesting and challenging. My wife, Linsi, continues to wisely invest in herself. Our new dog, Luna, (whom Linsi and I rescued from a great organization in April at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) is always adding excitement to our lives, whether through mischief or just by being adorable. It seems like a great year, at least on the surface. So let us look at the details…
I’m particularly happy with the extra emphasis I put on reading more books. Linsi helped a friend of ours start a book club in late June, and both of them were hoping I would be part of it to build up the club roster. One thing led to another and now I’m finishing up a Python script to visualize my reading pace, I have a catalog of everything I have read since the beginning of the year, and I’m planning on doing a “year end” retrospective on the books I finished. I have had this feeling that my creative juices have been drying up over the course of the past few years (graduate school and startup time commitments being the primary culprits). I felt that pouring my time and attention into reading and reflection was the right thing for my mental well-being, and as a result of my action I should be able to get some cool tools out of this project. An unexpected success!
My website finally got the makeover it has needed since this it was first commissioned back in late 2017. I have some ideas floating in my head for other additions I want to make in the near future (like a dashboard for content I generate in OnShape shown through their public API), but the site itself is finally looking and feeling like I always wanted it to. Producing content for it continues to be tough…I routinely wave off my own ideas for a new blog post if I feel that it will not “add anything of value.” Unfortunately, I also recognize that I would be better at generating meaningful content if I was practicing the act of writing more. You know, like generating content tends to do. Perhaps this post is sowing the latter to reap more of the former? I should make a note to do more casual writing into 2021 and beyond, regardless if it is for this website or not.
One of the things that made me deeply unhappy this year was the “fear of missing out” I felt from looking at all the other things people did with their own pandemic-complimentary free time. While I think that primal fear is commonly present in modern humans, the extra time I spent living vicariously through others caused that anxiety to come to the surface. Without much else to do during downtime, looking through the metaphorical “store window” at yet-another-cool-thing-I-could-have-done felt way more depressive than it usually does. The most insidious part is this seemed to be more of a steady and erosive process instead of an impulsive and acute one, so by the time I knew what I was doing to myself, the mental damage was already inflicted.
A notable exception is that of one of my closest friends, Paul Musgrave. I absolutely feel like he has done more interesting things in software and hardware throughout this past year, and I feel a great sense of pride when I look through his work. I suspect the social connection I have with him morphed my anxiety that I missed an opportunity to do something into excitement for the opportunity to collaborate on something even more compelling in the future. I should make a note to reach out to some other people and collaborate on more technical, creative, or other endeavors, and invite others to participate in more projects that are meaningful to me. I am not naturally keen at that kind of social connection building (whereas, my dad is an engineer but has always been a natural connector, so I know what that SHOULD look like), but it seems to be an area where I could stand to put in a bit more effort from here on out.
I think I need to be less risk-averse. I know that I have a pretty good sense of what is risky and what is not, but I ALWAYS seem to err on the side of caution, even if the potential downsides are minimal or nonexistent. Good example? Not spending time fleshing out my ideas for an robotics startup company focused on a particular market, as I can easily justify not spending any effort on it as “being prudent with my time”. Ugh. What’s the quote? “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take?” Wayne Gretzky may know a thing or two about success. I am not sure I even particuarly care about that startup idea; instead its the broader implication that I will miss out on an opportunity that an otherwise bright and energetic person would be able to take advantage of.
There’s certainly more I want to reflect on, but my thoughts on those topics are not in what could be called a stable orbit. Hopefully the next time I do one of these perspective posts, I can talk at length about some other things which are on my mind. Maybe that can be some writing practice.