The Waiting Place
dcurt.is
dcurt.is
But the one written work that really gets under my skin, in the vein of being a spectator vs. participant in life... and this might be cliche, but it's Pink Floyd's song Time.
...Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way...
...And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run you missed the starting gun...
...The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say...
What I find particularly interesting is this was written when the band felt they were losing relevance - by this point they had a run as long as and were about as old as The Beatles when they had broken up. A rock band back then entering their 30s who hadn't really broken out was doomed, right? What examples to the contrary were there? Yet Dark Side of the Moon is where their life as cultural icons began. Time is the only song on the album credited to all four members of the band.
I'm 36 years old and spent the first 15 years of my professional life working in the enterprise doing C++/C#, with all the wonderful trappings of Office Space. I'm proud of some of the work I did but overall I was pretty unhappy.
5 mos ago I quit my job to become a contractor. I do Rails work for a couple long-term clients based in NYC. This might not be a big deal to most people here... all I can say is I've never been happier. It's like, "I did it. And this is just the beginning."
They say it takes only 21 days to cultivate a habit. They also say major life decisions can happen in an instant, like a flick of the switch. I don't know how much of that is actually true, perhaps it's best to not ponder things like that too much.
Don't want to sound patronising or empty, but that's great - keep going
I always thought of leaving my country as a good way to get me started (leaving next to family would just give me a delusion of security, would make me more complacent and/or I had to deal with discouragement), but cost of living would be a factor for staying anyway.
Why I am saying all this? From just visiting a country as a tourist, a plan came up. And if I hadn't taken that offer maybe I would have quit. Or maybe not. And I am still considering of applying for some jobs abroad in the meantime (more waiting). But at least a more solid long-term plan has formed in the background now.
The problem is twofold:
1. I keep creating stuff that I don't care enough about. Thus it doesn't get the love it deserves and after a while starts looking bad on my "permanent record".
2. Because I keep being busy with things, the thing I'm waiting for keeps getting pushed back.
This sucks and I often try very hard to avoid this problem. One thing I've started doing is that whenever I get an impulse to say "I have to wait for X", I try to understand why I'm waiting.
if I can't come up with a really good reason (for instance, because the market/tech opportunity for project X isn't there yet, or maybe I simply can't fit another X into my life), then I shelf X for a while.
My biggest X is "move out of country". The reason for waiting is I don't have enough money saved up for a buffer to tie me over possible/probable dips in freelancing income. I think this is a good enough reason for waiting.
Now your focus can be re-targeted to doing -- so long as it's not doing waiting. It sounds like you have freelancing aspirations. Perhaps something worth doing is building a solid social network with a referral program. A bonafide consultancy. You may still want to go to another country, but you aren't waiting to do it -- you are starting a consultancy.
There may come a day when you see the financial success you set out for. You'll note you want to leave the country, so you will book a ticket for next week and set up an apartment. You'll just do it.
Semantically, you still waited. Mentally, you took action -- so there was no negative fallout usually associated with waiting. Always commit fully to your present task, do not let the delusion of waiting creep in and breed complacency.
It's what I am trying, at least... human nature does have a lot of exploits.
But this is a matter of perspective. Ask my mum and she'll tell you I'm a bohemian idiot who doesn't want to get a regular job and dicks around on his computer all day.
> The reason for waiting is I don't have enough money saved up for a buffer to tie me over possible/probable dips in freelancing income. I think this is a good enough reason for waiting.
There are always plenty of reasons for not doing stuff, but life is made up of the stuff that you do, not of the stuff that you postpone.
There is a song (in French) about a guy that his whole life long wants to go see the gulf of Mexico, and on his dying bed his wife tells him 'If you'd have had any guts you would have gone there to see it'. It's a pretty rude ending to an otherwise perfectly sweet song but there is a grain of truth in there.
You're young, fairly talented. You could likely land anywhere and make it, and even if you don't it'd be a fantastic adventure and you'll be smarter and with a broader horizon regardless of the outcome. I've moved countries several times and likely will do so again at some point in the future so this is not me telling you how it could work in theory. It can work. It can work for you too.
One way in which you could finance your move is by working free-lance for companies via the net. I know a few people doing this right now and they can pretty much work from anywhere in the world. Enjoy your freedom while you're still mobile, young and healthy.
That's exactly what I'm going to do! But doing it in a situation where any delayed payment means I can't afford to buy food is just irresponsible and borderline stupid.
So really I'm not so much waiting as I am spinning up a freelancing business and getting it to a point where it's a somewhat reliable income stream and making sure I don't find myself in a situation where I have to take on jobs out of desperation.
What exactly do they do as freelance work? Building mobile apps, websites? Where can I get to know more about this?
Edit: Good... "Oh, The Places You'll Go! site:news.ycombinator.com" Google search helped me assure myself I'm not crazy. This is the other article: http://daltoncaldwell.com/oh-the-places-youll-go and HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4061059
Funny thing is that both are using Svbtle, which helped further confuse me.
I won't remove this comment (which is definitely off-topic and non-constructive) because I think others might experience the same shock as mine and it would save them a bit of Googling...
Unlike most times people tell you to read a book, it'll actually only take 10 minutes.
Since I sent it out, I have thought of a couple nice 'features' that would have reduced some of my work load, but only about 3 minutes a board. I waited a month to save three minutes........
I forget what author I was reading (one of the many posts on 'doing something') when I had a moment of clarity - JUST SEND THE DAMN THING OUT. I reviewed it a little bit, said whatever, sent it out. We'll see how it works when I get it.
It's easy to forget how nice it is do develop software. You get instant feedback as to whether something works on the surface level. It would be much worse to code on a system where you wrote 100 lines of code, had to send it out and get the compiled version back in a week. Syntax error on line 4, no feedback given for lines 5-100. Hardware is a much more elusive beast, but having something physical, something that you can bring with you, that isn't created from a plane of RGB lights, that you can hold, touch, and feel.
There's always a double edged sword, for every problem there is an opportunity, you lose a little bit of something for every convenience you take up in your life, the hardware software divide is one with the sense of touch and smell. Software currently doesn't feel or smell like anything. It doesn't weigh anything. It has no value outside of the tubes. A piece of hardware can reach across different boundaries and engage different senses.
Then I decided, "---- that shit!" and just go ahead and do khanacademy. The result? I worked weeks after weeks on khanacademy,(spending at least an hour) and now I completed 83% of all of the math exercises and concepts. 316 concepts are mastered out of 379, and 63 more concepts to go.
Combined with a couple of good habits, I have perpetual emotions like "OH YEAH." or "---- YEAH" or "I AM A BADASS" because I keep doing thing that is productive and meaningful to me. Which is kinda odd, because you expect the hedonistic trendmill to catch up with the level you are at.
Beautifully explained Elizabeth Jennings in Delay:
The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how
Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.For the young'uns: don't wait till it all makes sense to you. Every word in it is true.
"If you can wait and not be tired by waiting" - Kippling
Again It seems we meet
In the spaces In between
We always say, "Won't be long"
Oh but something's always wrong