i've noticed a bit of a trend in how i work.
i'll be learning something foundational and then see a shiny new idea, what if my life looked like this. i think the intention itself is sound
I'll see you basically, I'll see a shiny new thing and I'll hyperfixate it on it for a while.
Fix there's example of productivity of hyperfixate on a tool, hyperfixate on trying a new thing, trying to get this new new system and over engineered.
And I've noticed a lot that's happened when I tried to learn the Johnny Decinel system.
It happened when I read books about GTD.
It happened when I tried to learn force myself into bullet journaling for a while.
It happened when I tried to build my blog.
It happened when I tried to use Sunsama and Asana, and I think every time I found out that these aren't things that I need.
And I think, I don't know. Because I was thinking, I don't really know if this is a bad thing. By being this overachiever and going for these things, I then realize that I just don't need it, and it makes me appreciate the things that I'm using because, for example, blogging, I think about sharing things a lot and finding ways to do things.
And one of the things I just thought of was this sort of blogish, microblogging thing where I share things.
And so I bought the domain consuming dot now and I was trying to figure it out.
And basically barring on the fundamentals I knew, I'd spent some minimal time learning JabbavaScript and trying to build it.
And then I kind of realized that I was getting lost in the idea of something and how to get there without really spending time developing the idea itself.
And this kind of happened for a bit where I would try to do it, get stuck, and then double down .
I think that's something I'm really good at.
And it wasn't until I created this newsletter that I think I actually found some progress because .
I'm actually exploring the idea that I had.
I'm exploring the idea of sharing my thoughts.
And in a way where I'm not trying to create this product at the end, I'm okay with shipping this half-assed website that is coded in barely any HMLCSS .
I hope nobody's inspected elements did because it's pretty bad.
But.
And like most recently with the trying to self-host memos, I think the idea that got me into this rabbit hole was I love the idea of having my own stuff.
Part of what I want for this website, well, for this blog is to have its own website with its own library of components, its own kinds of embeds, so that it's an entire, the website itself feels like its own little space and it's not just an amalgamation of everything else on internet.
I don't want .
I don't like the idea of my blog having a lot of corporate embeds.
Every time I want to link a song or a video.
I don't really want that branding just on there, which is why I've been thinking about projects that circumvent that.
And I think what this is really taught me is sticking stock to not.
I think it's good that I explore things and dive into things that I absolutely do not need.
I do not need to know what a Kub Bernetti is.
I didn't know Kub Bernetti's had to be in it.
I thought it was a P.
I don't know why.
And then my friend told me that it's not pronounced Ketti's.
Nobody else corrects me, and I guess I'm just stupid.
But. .
I like the kind of yo- yo-ing because I think especially in education, it's very easy to get your head stuck in the hole and then just head in, I guess, the dirt, studying and then you're just studying and you're focused on whatever you're learning and what I think I appreciate about my inside out ways of doing things is that I'm throwing myself at projects.
And even though I'm not able to do them or really achieve anything, I feel like I'm understanding more what's out there and what I need to understand. Trying to identify gaps in my knowledge and quickly discovering well, I guess my knowledge is entirely a gap and it's like more of an island rather than a whole.
But.
I feel good about it.
Like, I think me hyperfixating on something is good and failing is good.
And I think every time I acknowledge that this is not for me, that I don't need to do this really lets me think more on what I'm trying to do, what I need.
And what I want to do because I don't know if I would get these lessons by just following the coursework.
And I think these quote unquote little side quests have been really good for me for my ambition, spirit, just to try and do something that is totally out of scope and failing at it.
And I like that.
The idea that there is something that is completely out of my knowledge base, but I'm going to try and figure it out anyways. Because I don't really know I don't know anything about Go. I don't know anything about Docker or how S3 works.
But I know it's there now.
I know I now have a vague idea of that being there.
And I still want to ask questions about how those things interact with each other.
And I think now I'm one of the things I'm now thinking about is I'm looking forward to figuring that out once I get the foundations.
I like going back to things because now , now that I've done this, now that I've gone this back-ass word way of trying to dive into something that I don't understand and going back to basic JavaScript fundamentals, react fundamentals, HTL, CSS , I now have this memory of the emotion of being lost.
And I remember this feeling because that's how I felt when I built my blog or tried to.
I was working with Astro knowing it's like, oh, I need a static site.
I know what a static site it is.
I like basic.
But then I'm not going through it and I don't know what a map is , what the fuck is in a r map.
How does it work?
And that's kind of where I gave up, because I managed to get something working, but I didn't know why it was working or how it was working.
And so I put it on the back burner.
And now several months later, going back through the documentation, I know what I in a ring map is.
I know what an object is.
And that feeling of coming back to something and feeling my knowledge grow , I think that's in a sense of accomplishment. That I think it's like a marker for when something is achieved.
I think one of the reasons why it's hard for us to appreciate things Specifically things we do. Is because it's so gradual that we don't realize how much we've changed because every day is incremental.
By having this stark realization of, I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing, or I don't know what the fuck this is or how this works and then coming back to it three months, six months later, and having an entirely new way to look at it. Is an emotion of achievement and I think one of the reasons why we don't feel as proud of achievements is because we don't give ourselves opportunities to fail as much by doing things in a back-asswards way, I am almost guaranteeing failure.
Realistically, there is no way I'm going to figure out how to set up a self-host application without a lot of struggle.
And I think I, well, I launched it.
It's the following the guide.
It's very straightforward.
But I'm now asking a lot of questions like, okay, how was this out running?
How does self-hosting work ?
Where, if I wanted this to be on the cloud, how would that run?
What parts of this need to be on the cloud?
Answer is just the database and some files.
I don't.
It's not a good idea to put the entire rendering thing in the cloud if you don't need to. Wouldn't have known that.
And I think that's one of the big parts about learning on your own and that I've found motivating is forcing myself into situations where I'm guaranteed to fail .
And .
I think that failure, when I realized that, whatever I'm doing, is more time than it's worth or that there's other things.
I can, I feel better about shelving it and thinking about what I have.
Because I'm not going to use memos or I'm not going to be able to get it to a state of a feature set that I would find usable in the time that I have.
And while I've been hyperfixating on it, I recognize that classes are starting .
I've got a pretty sizable workload coming up.
And the time that I have now is not going to last.
And the time that I spend on this is going to be more inefficient because I don't have the fundamentals .
And so I'm okay shelving it.
It's like in a video game where you encounter a boss that is, you've just gone way off the progression, intended progression.
And so you go, okay , well, you could theoretically just beat your head into it until you manage to do it.
And I could do that theoretically.
But .
It's not the intended way.
And there's nothing wrong, and there's a.
It probably feels good.
I don't know, maybe Dark Souls, never played it.
But when you find a boss, you can't beat it and you go, fuck, I'm going to go do some other stuff .
And then you come back and you beat its ass.
And that feeling, I think, is probably what a lot of people treasure.
I want to think more on that, but I don't really know.
So where I'm at now is I want to focus on this newsletter.
I want to focus on classes.
And I want to focus on JavaScript.
And once I create some projects, I'll come back to this eventually.
I want to make front ends.
I want to make websites and .
I want to keep failing.