Indulge me for a moment, if you will. So I’m sitting here half dead (having recently turned 39), stepping up to my midlife crisis, reassessing the balance of my life. I am pondering, as we often do in our household, how Thomas Edison and Mother Theresa and Martha Stewart can be so damned productive with THEIR 24 hours (answer key: slept in lab, no husband to mother, cloning). And of course part of the problem is the massive amount of pondering – we are of “armchair philosopher” stock, as opposed to the “git r done” subcontractor types. Thinkers, not doers.
But I want to “git r done” too, in this lifetime. My motto has always been “slow burn”. Keep a balance in life and always keep the dreams slowly moving forward. The midlife crisis says “Panic! You’re out of time! Get on the fast track!”. I’m sure it’s sent even the strongest men flying off balance. But consider the philosophy that life is staged in various sequences. Right now, I’m waist-deep in the family stage. And as a dad you should never forget that your kids won’t always fly to see you when you come home, begging you not to work late again. That pure love is a limited resource, extremely valuable, not to be squandered. I’m not about to give up a second of that.
So what else is there? “Personal time”. I would rather be a crack addict than a TV addict. But watching movies with Andrea is awesome. We have a stop-at-15-minutes-if-it’s-a-bad-movie rule, we don’t have time for any more [Boat Trip]’s.
On the nights that we don’t hook up for a movie, I hit the computer. I’ve worked on my infamous side projects forever, making slow progress, but as of late, I’ve made none. Can’t seem to get over the hump of being tired/distracted/consumptive. That’s the other half of my motto: production, not consumption. So it’s time to get refocused on being productive. The bottom line: RSS feeds have ruined me, and I’m not going to let them any more. Wired Magazine says we’re getting smarter, I say we’re getting shallower. I know a small amount about everything. Meet the 21st century Renaissance man, knowledgeable about everything, skilled at nothing. RSS must die. It is the latest equivalent of crack cocaine, sitcom TV, and (yes even the good old days had problems) whittling. So I’m changing my home page from that evil seductress, the RSS reader, to my very own project management ToDo list. Wish me luck in this very important next sequence in the process known as life. And you can kick the RSS habit too!
