Fried Mind with that sir? Obsessions and the erosion of self

Obsessions are strange spiders, building webs I cannot see.  Caught, and thinking I’m free. Bought, but thinking I’m me.

Yeah, so I spent the last 2 days trying to get a certain not-to-be-mentioned underground copy of Windows XP to install on one of my machines, an old one (6 years old). A strange thing to get obsessed with, don’t you think? It was a ‘productive’ experience, in that I learned quite a bit more than I’d planned. But who am I fooling? Why did I even bother with it, install after install, tweak, fix, research, script, DOS, install, etc.. for 10 hours or so? I had a perfectly good OS to put back in place, but I persisted with the one that wouldn’t work. I gave up other projects, like Joomla, website content, relearning CSS, getting more familiar with Ubuntu, etc.. for a few days, just to focus on this one thing. I got less exercise, I read less, I thought less, and now I feel like shit really. Burnt out.

I have some idea that I’m going to go back into computer consulting full time, and that’s my excuse for endless tinkering, though dimly, in the back of my mind, I remember that this is why I gave it up a couple of years ago: I’m too able to slip out of time and into software. Besides, I don’t want to be a great jack-of-all-trades computer guy. It is boring in the end. Well, not boring, but its not satisfying to my soul or self. Putting checks in the bank ATM yesterday was satisfying though. What do I want, and how do I stay on track to get there? Another boring question, but personally I need to ask it on the hour, every hour.

Washed out,

GF

1-19-08 Diary and Reflection on Blogging

So its been about 3 weeks since I started my WP blog, Towards Growing Freedom. I’m fairly happy with it. I was really sick of my Greatest Journal blog. Its gone now, apparently. I’m glad I backed up many of the entries last year.

What I don’t like about WordPress.com blogs: Slow, lack of template editing, not really a fun place for the hacker in me. What I do like: Easy to use, most everything makes sense, its easy to get a clean looking blog, and the widgets are actually useful (though again slow)

I’ve been building a website over the last couple of days, the main point of which is to get some much needed and overdue CSS, PHP, and DHTML practice in. I’ll link it of course to these blogs when I get something worth visiting going.

I may create a few practice web pages over the next few weeks, and I’ll post some links here perhaps. Making websites is so much fun.

Watching a video on using Dreamweaver. Its o.k. (Total Training), but I’m missing the second DVD where she goes into CSS and the meaty stuff. I’m working on getting that second DVD .

My computer clients are busily using my skills. I calculated that I could earn >100,000 US working 40 hours a week. I think I have to say ‘Yes’ to that!

Mostly I don’t enjoy the work in the ‘this is my life’s work’ department, but I do enjoy helping people, and I get to learn all sorts of workarounds by defeating various problems that come up for clients. These last weeks I’ve: Set up and secured some wireless routers, fixed speed issues on various machines, secured firewalls, antivirus, anti-spyware applications, installed stupid Outlook 2007 and got it to work with various webmail servers, gotten some RAM for some old machine, transferred files to new machines, and done lots of diagnoses on slow machines.

Meh, boring!

I’m off to the store for a minute, then will probably read more of my brother’s Family Therapy textbook. Pretty good so far. I really feel like I’m getting a handle on how the various schools of psychology interface, how we’ve come to look at the life of the mind, etc..

I’d like to write about more personal goings-on, but there’s not much to say today. I’ve successfully gotten stuck-in to nerdland and my emotional life is keeping a low profile. I need to do some reflection on that.