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The nature of obsession
As I get older I find that I'm getting less and less tolerant of doing something I don't want to do. More than that, I'm less tolerant of not doing the thing I most want to do at a given moment. (Philosophical footnote: technically every conscious act you take is the thing you most want to do, but I'm talking about a less holistic meaning for "want".) I used to put a higher value on variety: when there were several things I wanted to do, I would tend to prefer the one I had done least recently. If I did the same thing repeatedly, even if it was something I really liked, I would get bored and want to do something else for a while. But nowadays, and especially in the last few weeks, all I want to do is hack. (Specifically, I've been hacking on Volity, but more on that in a future post, maybe.)
The most obvious thing I haven't been doing is posting to LiveJournal. I do have a bunch of things I'd like to post about, but it just hasn't been highest on the list (until now). But I've been neglecting other things that I've been wanting to do, like cleaning my room, or putting a travel bug I've had for months into a geocache, or watching stuff on my DVR (beyond the minimum required to keep it from deleting stuff). The things I most regret not doing are opportunities that won't come again soon, like seeing particular bands play live: I've recently passed on seeing Boris & Thrones, Sunn O))), Narcoterror (my friends Dan & Joe from Abunai!), Stinking Lizaveta, Major Stars, and I think a couple others I'm forgetting. To be fair, for a lot of these I was also feeling too tired to go out, but if I didn't have another reason to stay home I might have dragged myself out anyway. And part of the reason I was tired was because I've been getting up earlier than usual—I wake up at 8, and then can't fall back asleep because I'm thinking about hacking.
I don't think I'm obsessed. It's not that I feel frantically driven to hack. (Although I am a little impatient that it's taken me longer to get to a milestone than I thought.) It's just that it's been really fun, more fun than anything else I could think of to be doing. But maybe that's all obsession really is? I don't think it's unhealthy—I still go to work, I didn't miss today's dentist appointment, I've only skipped a couple meals (and I could stand to eat a bit less anyway). And it's rewarding, mainly in the personal sense of accomplishment from seeing a working program appear out of empty XEmacs buffers, but also because it will produce something that I want to exist in the world. And there are second-order rewards, like the ego boost of producing a piece of free software that hopefully other people will use and extend. And it might increase my reputation a little, or even help out with employment opportunities down the road. But these are mainly just reasons not to feel guilty, rather than actual motivations.
I'll sum up with a quote from Paul Graham: Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.
Edit: I remembered another show I missed: Charlene. And tonight is Dungen and tomorrow is Bardo Pond, but I'm still holding out hope that I'll make it to those.
The most obvious thing I haven't been doing is posting to LiveJournal. I do have a bunch of things I'd like to post about, but it just hasn't been highest on the list (until now). But I've been neglecting other things that I've been wanting to do, like cleaning my room, or putting a travel bug I've had for months into a geocache, or watching stuff on my DVR (beyond the minimum required to keep it from deleting stuff). The things I most regret not doing are opportunities that won't come again soon, like seeing particular bands play live: I've recently passed on seeing Boris & Thrones, Sunn O))), Narcoterror (my friends Dan & Joe from Abunai!), Stinking Lizaveta, Major Stars, and I think a couple others I'm forgetting. To be fair, for a lot of these I was also feeling too tired to go out, but if I didn't have another reason to stay home I might have dragged myself out anyway. And part of the reason I was tired was because I've been getting up earlier than usual—I wake up at 8, and then can't fall back asleep because I'm thinking about hacking.
I don't think I'm obsessed. It's not that I feel frantically driven to hack. (Although I am a little impatient that it's taken me longer to get to a milestone than I thought.) It's just that it's been really fun, more fun than anything else I could think of to be doing. But maybe that's all obsession really is? I don't think it's unhealthy—I still go to work, I didn't miss today's dentist appointment, I've only skipped a couple meals (and I could stand to eat a bit less anyway). And it's rewarding, mainly in the personal sense of accomplishment from seeing a working program appear out of empty XEmacs buffers, but also because it will produce something that I want to exist in the world. And there are second-order rewards, like the ego boost of producing a piece of free software that hopefully other people will use and extend. And it might increase my reputation a little, or even help out with employment opportunities down the road. But these are mainly just reasons not to feel guilty, rather than actual motivations.
I'll sum up with a quote from Paul Graham: Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.
Edit: I remembered another show I missed: Charlene. And tonight is Dungen and tomorrow is Bardo Pond, but I'm still holding out hope that I'll make it to those.
Re: not that you asked, but this may help