I think the crux of the problem is that my life has become too complicated.

Let's see if I can give an analogy. Ever played chess? You build this defense. This piece covers that piece, this piece covers these two, this one maintains a zone of control, and so forth. You are building this Rube-Goldbergesque defense all across the board, hoping that your planning and forethought is better than your opponent's. You slowly try to advance this army, prodding and trying to spread the enemy force too thin so that this tenuous web of defenses comes tumbling down before yours does.

That's the whole of my life - a complicated jumble. I try to do this to shore up that part of my life, I do this so that another area won't collapse. But it's a lot of work to just hold your life together. There's not enough of me to left to ever try to make things better. I don't have enough pieces to move forward, just to play scorched-earth chess while I watch what remains fall, being driven back into a corner.

A lot of people ask me, "so what do you want?" And I always feel like they're going to tell me what I want is wrong, or selfish, or... something. That makes me unable to tell them. I can feel the disapproval from practically everyone; from Gurugrrl, from Crafty, from other, unnamed people. (The only one I haven't felt it from is Poet, oddly enough... I wish I had just discussed it with her when she offered. I probably could have explained it from the standpoint of her friend Jim and she might have understood.)

You know what I really want? (This probably sounds stupid, but I'll tell you anyway.)

• I want to develop something new and novel. I want to pursue my ideas. I have a lot of ideas, and keep having more and more new ones. I even muse to myself that some of the ideas I have had are some of the "hot topics" right now, except I can point out how my implementations would have been better. (For instance - I think it was really dumb for Sun to make Java as a C++-a-like language. It should have been a LISP-a-like language like I envisioned back in '91-'92 for something vaguely similar (although embedded in a different system than a web browser), because:
  1. optimizing compilers for LISP or other functional languages rival the best procedural compilers (and sometimes are better on some code, not to mention you lose problems with things like fencepost errors that run rampant in lots of other languages),
  2. a LISP like language is relatively easy to implement quickly as an interpreter or compiler,
  3. a LISP-like language is one that most anybody can learn and program in, unlike the esoterica in many procedural languages,
  4. (most) advanced data structures in LISP are almost trivial to implement, and pretty easy to visualize, and
  5. they can lend themselves to many programming styles and approaches (functional languages are generally the most expressive).)

  The problem with wanting to do something new is that generally you have to do it all on your own, start a company, or you have to wait until you move up in a corporation and can garner enough support within the organization to get your own projects. Of course, the first two are expensive, and the third requires a large time investment and I have notoriously short patience with companies (my longest tenure with any given employer is eighteen months, I believe).

  Ideally, I'd have people to work with. Unfortunately, I don't know anybody, and I don't even know how to approach anybody anymore. Also, the few times I started to try to work with anybody, something happened. I don't really want to repeat those experiences again.

  So maybe I can do it on my own? I don't know. I can't see a good way to afford it, or good projects. I mean, sure, I could work on something open source, and release it under the GPL/BSD license/artistic license, but then how do I make a living? (This might be something to research, I guess.)

  Thus, I just don't know where to go on that front.

• I want sufficient resources to actually be able to complete something I am working on. For the longest time, I didn't have the computational resources to do the things I wanted to do. I just couldn't secure them, and had nobody to really borrow some from.

  I don't even really want to borrow them. I know somebody who said he'll let me host my website with him. The problem with that? I don't want to feel indebted to him for that. I hate feeling like I owe somebody something all the time. It makes me feel like I can't take care of things myself. I have to do things myself.

  Anyway, now I have computational resources. Now I lack network and software resources. I could probably acquire software resources (mostly, a good compiler and documentation), but I have been looking, in vain, for network resources. Most of the ideas I have are inherently distributed or network-enabled. Thus, I'm behind again.

• I don't want going to school to interfere with my getting an education (with apologies to Mark Twain). I guess an addendum to that would be that I do not want to be subjected to where I went before. I mean, think about it: college is a long, grueling road, and moreso still when it's someplace that you have a lot of issues and bad memories from. I get tense, tired and angry every time I think about the university I went to.

  Unfortunately, I don't know what I'm going to be able to accomplish without a degree. It's such a necessary evil. From my standpoint, what it really shows that I can put up with four years of bureaucracy, professors with unintelligible writing and accents, mind-numbing lectures and tedious hoop-jumping.

  The trick is that I don't need to go to school to learn; everybody who knows me would concede this fact. I can sit down with the books and curl up and read. Browse related websites. Read the seminal papers in a given area. Practice. Do projects. But when was the last time you went to a technical job and they asked to see your portfolio of what you've done?

  They don't. Sad, but true.

  I didn't mind going to lectures in physics or math. They were interesting. It was even new ground a lot of the time once I got to a certain level. In computer science classes? I can be sitting in a class in compiler design thinking. oh, yeah, I learned this when I read the Dragon book (What is a dragon book, you ask?), or in a course on operating systems internals I'd be going to myself, I read a lot more interesting and in-depth thread on this on Usenet a year ago. It's such a waste for me to study computer science, even though that's where I really think my interests lay now (okay, again).

• I want to quit worrying about what people think, and be complete in myself. Generally, I don't worry about it, day-to-day, but then there's always that time when I do worry, in the dark, when I'm alone, when I'm looking for something else and discover something that reminds me of them, their disapproval, their misconceptions, what they think about me.

  This they can be anybody. People I knew. People I still know. Someone I love. People I pass on the street and will never see again. People I did wrong by. People I just plain forgot about, and woke up one night and realized I'd just been dreaming about them for hours and I have no idea why.

  Why do I care what they think? I don't know. But I cry out for their approval. Everyone's approval. I need validation of what I'm doing. Perhaps I don't trust in my own judgement anymore, because of all the wrong turns I've made. But I still feel like I need people to check my thinking and input, and I have to make sure that everybody else feels good about me and what I'm doing.

I think that pretty much covers it.

I have this crazy dream.

I'm sitting in a house somewhere. Somewhere that isn't Texas. It's warm, but pleasant.

I'm in my study, surrounded by bookshelves and equipment, but with a big bay window to look out of thoughtfully when I'm considering how to approach something.

I have my primary computer on the desk, and a couple shoved out of the way here-and-there to perform this function or compute this or serve that.

I'm spending quality time with a text editor and an ICQ client on one monitor and a couple shells, a browser, an Acrobat viewer showing documentation and an .mp3 player on another, writing software. What software? I don't know. Hacking at an operating system? Working on free software tools? Writing a game? Websites? Something new that I haven't even envisioned yet? Or one of my old ideas? Does it really matter? I'm enjoying myself.

I don't want for tools, hardware, documentation or bandwidth. I have everything I need to actually get things accomplished during my 20 hour hacking runs.

I get to spend as much time as I want doing it. In fact, I probably spend most of my time doing it. Maybe I'm not always doing exactly what I want, but what I do for pay is directly related to what I do for pleasure.

Maybe I work for somebody, or maybe I make a product. Maybe I run a company. Doesn't matter, because I don't have to worry about having money to pay an eighty dollar payment next month. I'm not rolling in cash, but I'm not stressed out about how I'm going to pay the rent this month.

I live with a woman who may or may not be my wife, but either way we are in love. She understands me, I understand her, and she supports what I do. She believes in me totally. She has her own thing going on, so she's happy to leave me to my devices while she does hers, but we still leave time for each other.

I have a close-knit group of friends, who come over occasionally and don't feel like they're guests when they get there because of the other people who live there. They're probably geeks, too; they understand my jokes, we like a lot of the same things. We hang out a lot. We work together often.

My family is nowhere to be seen.

I don't go around feeling incompetent or like a washed-up never-ran. I actually feel talented again. People use my work and appreciate it. I'm well-known in my community.

I don't remember what it's like to feel sad, or lonely, or hurt.

I told you it was crazy.

restlessmind