Things have been moving quickly, and things have been moving slowly.

I live in a house with a couple of housemates at the moment, and in exchange for paying a low rent, I have to adhere to their (very reasonable) requests. Recently, a family member of theirs visited and I had to move from guest bedroom #1 to guest bedroom #2. Fine and dandy. Set up a new table, set up the computer, all was good. The family member left, and I moved back into GB#1.

That was…oh…five weeks ago. The first move and then the second move threw me from the organized environment I was in, and into a state of disarray and chaos. I’ve been cleaning up bit by bit, but it’s been a slow process. The room I’m staying in is finally a little more habitable — i.e., I can walk through it without stepping on something. I put in two loads of laundry tonight, and moved things around into relevant piles.

I’m going to be moving at the end of next month. I’m not sure what I’m going to do at this point. At first, I wanted to live alone. Now I’m actually considering having a roomie…I can’t believe it…
I mean, I value my privacy *at home* and all, but a roomie means a significant reduction in rent and utilities. So…I’m torn between having my own setup and hours, and somebody else having access to the place in which I’m living.
Access…ugh…okay, that word just decided it for me. I value my privacy *too* much not to live alone right now.

I’m simply more productive by myself. Sure, work isn’t everything, but I’m not talking about work. Well, not completely. The truth is, there are several projects that I’ve been working on for the past two years that I haven’t been able to complete. Part of it is my ADD, but part of it is my changing life situation. So much is constantly changing…but this new job is helping me get the stability that I’d like to have.

I like being on an “8:30 to 5:30″ (give or take) schedule. It means that I can actually plan my days around a specific block of time that is rooted down to a necessity in my life. During the summer, it was a varying school schedule. Because I *do* get distracted easily, it’s not healthy for me to have free reign of my days. I never get anything done that way. I spend over half the time I could be doing something trying to decide what I should do first. When I have a part of the day blocked off (in this case, work) that I *must* attend, it lets me schedule things into the rest of the day. When I leave for work, I get excited about the things I can learn and deal with on the job that day, and when I get home I still have a motivation from work that enables me to simply start on things that I have to do and work on them.

For instance, I know my time is somewhat limited before bed, so I immediately enter the door, do something with the laundry or dishes or wiping something down, and then I move to checking and responding to e-mails (sorry Loungers, I know I need to come back and catch up, it’s on the to-do list), and then I move to making necessary phone calls, checking news, etc, and then I work on some sort of programming project.

Not having my own place throws burrs into that sometimes, though. Having others in a domicile means that you need to acknowledge them, stop for smalltalk, and complete “favors” and such for them. I don’t have any problem doing that usually, but the list of things that I’m *not* getting done is starting to pile up. I need to get things started. I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing as much as I should in life at the moment. Things are moving in the right direction, but they’re not there yet.

Something that plagues me about every two or three days is the nagging sense that I’m not getting anywhere in life. I know that I AM getting somewhere, but I’m getting to the places that I need to get. I know, it isn’t a horrible thing that I’m meeting my own expectations, but I like to push myself. I like to go above and beyond in life. I like to feel like I’m making a difference. Right now, I don’t feel like I’m leaving my mark on the world. I don’t feel like people are using the things that they should be using. People should be using open-source browsers and recent applications and…make that standards-compliant, not necessarily open-source……and…and…I just feel like I *deserve* to have some part in a project that will change people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be one project, and I don’t have to have a part of it…it can be several projects that I COMPLETELY develop, but I want to be known.

I don’t want to be famous famous, I just want to be internet-famous. I want people to be able to download things that I’ve made and say, “Yeah! HE made that! I know him!” or something of the sort. I want to make things that people appreciate. I want to make things that people can use. I feel the need to DOCUMENT and CREATE. I feel the need to leave my stamp on a wax seal on the internet.

This blog is part of that. I want to be able to link to my feelings and creations and document things when I can. I know that I’m not the most faithful in writing here, that’s for sure…but at least I do write here. I feel that in itself is an accomplishment. I feel that if I get back into a set routine I can write here every day about something I learn, or something new.

This entry sounds selfish and demanding, but of whom am I making demands? Myself? Don’t I have that right? Aren’t I allowed to ask myself what it is that I’m doing, what I could be doing better, how I should be doing things, and when I should be doing them?

Why is it that I get sudden bursts of inspiration at times? Why is it that on a few select (random) days of the year that I am able to pound out a GOOD, ORGANIZED, DOCUMENTED program in one hour — but that should have taken ten hours? Why is it that sometimes I can start projects, or contribute to them, and then never visit them again, or wait two or three years to revisit them? I don’t understand the discrepancy in my life.

Well, I do partially. I start something, and then I learn about something else, and the constant learning process keeps me flowing along. It’s like the river of knowledge of things to be learned in the world is sweeping through me. Right now. Tomorrow. Forever. I’m in the river, I’m picking up the pieces of things that float along in it, and I’m desperately trying to grab for a root on the bank of the river to keep me from being swept away. Something, anything. I want to be able to stay in one area of knowledge and absorb and learn and complete things in that area before moving on to the next one. I find myself unable to do that. I find that I am constantly thinking in much the same manner. I’ll think about writing a program, I’ll start writing it, I’ll encounter a problem I need to solve in the logic of the program, I’ll look up solutions to the problem, I’ll look up the roots of those solutions and the architectures that are built upon those solutions, and then I’ll realize four weeks later that, “Oh yeah, I still have a program to write, what happened to it?” when it turns out that I’ve already flipped from one end of the logic for a single problem in the program to the other, systematic end of that logic…without ever entering any of it into the program. Sure, I’ll have learned a lot, or at least learned *of* a lot and learned a little of a lot, but that doesn’t complete my goal.

It doesn’t help that there are constantly things vying for my attention and that new technologies are always emerging. Reading about things makes me want to be a part of them, but I realize I can’t be a part of everything. These new things that I read about catch my attention and make me forget about the old things I was doing. I have directories full of programming projects on my computer that I’ve started in various languages and never finished. Sure, it’s great learning…but if I can’t complete something, what use am I?

It’s so…….so….frustrating!

It’s like a horizontal river flowing east (life) meeting with a vertical river flowing south (knowledge) that keeps pushing me to the southeast on a tributary that isn’t as fast as either one of the original rivers. I want to go fast, I want to get places, I want to know things *now*. I have a hard enough time doing the speed limit (I manage, but it takes a great deal of self-control) in a car without having to obey one in my existence, but I’m subject to both. People say, “Oh, knowledge comes with age.” Yes, yes…thank you very much, Einstein. I know that. You don’t have to tell me. I PROMISE, I’m not stupid. I am impetuous, but I can’t help it. I just want things to get done and over with so that I can move to something new and learn something new.

Even though I’m always happy with what I have (everything I own fits in my car), both physically and emotionally…and even though I’m satisfied with my position in life at the moment because I know where I’m going…
…I still feel like I’m in a constant state of…unsatisfaction.

I don’t feel like my thirst is quenched. It can’t be quenched. I feel like I’m doomed to move along at the pace of the world, like I have to learn things that the rate that other people want me to learn them and not at the rate that I *can* learn them. I feel like my physical limitations in my own brain are trying to keep me from taking in too much at once. I think my ADD is my body’s self-defense mechanism against me overloading myself during the day. But in return, my body makes up for it at night by extending my waking hours so I can take more in.

I find sleep to be a hindrance, mostly. At least, that’s the feeling that I get nowadays. Sleep, to me, is defined as the period between when my body is exhausted and has to stop taking in information, and when it can physically begin absorbing that information again. If it were possible for me to eliminate sleep from my schedule without going insane, I would. There are lots of things in the world that distract me and keep me from finishing projects I start, but I call sleep “the big distraction”. If I’m working on something when I fall asleep, I’m generally (and usually) not inclined to begin that something again the next day. Sleep is the break in logic, it signifies to me the means to move on to something new. Part of the problem is that all my life I’ve been told to take things day by day, so I’m conditioned to do that. Every day is a new day. New days mean new things. I start getting impatient with the old things. Hence the need for a schedule. If I weren’t (thankfully) rooted down by work every week day, I’d simply be left to float in that river of knowledge and get ever more frustrated. Work is a relief for me because it keeps me from getting distracted. I get things done there. I learn new things.

The feeling of being held back in life by my own brain and by life events and society’s preachings of taking things slow and easy is more frustrating than I can stand at times. I’m glad that I have wonderful people in my area to help distract me from that thought and to keep me on the bright side of things. It’s nice knowing people care. People care. …yeah, that is a nice thought.

A lot of people get on my nerves, though I’m learning to control that…but people caring. That’s what makes everything worthwhile. I don’t need a lot of people to care, but the ones that do care mean a lot to me.

I think that people who care are the ones who make it so that I can finally sleep at night. Even though they aren’t there with me, the idea of interacting with friends and loved ones puts my mind at ease and makes me able to relax and smell the cheese. (I like cheese, I’m not overly fond of flowers.)