Hey again. It's been a week, and I've studied a little bit--always less than I plan to, of course :p . I still don't know what this site will develop into, but I feel excitement to see how it will organically develop. Until I land on a theme (and that certainly can change), I'll be using photos from a trip I took to California what feels like a lifetime ago. It was...a pilgrimage, I think is the right way to call it. I may write about it more in my essays here sometime. For now, I'll limit myself to saying that the new background photo is from a fine spring day's hike I took there. It's not far from where the old Windows XP background photo was taken, if I recall correctly.
I've also updated the header/page title with a new font, just testing out to see how I like it. I'd like to add a roadmap or ideas board here soon too--a guest book being one item at the top of my list.
Hi there. I'm very excited about this project--for such a long time, I've wanted to make my own site, and I miss the days of discovery of an earlier internet (coincidentally when I was younger). This page on my site is for me to share the steps of my learning process here, as we head down the path together. What can I say? I love the narrative and it's probably how I understand life much more than the experiential. My essays and longform thoughts are over here, but those are either unbounded in time, or if they relate to time, it's with the world at large moreso than my site here.
A bit about me: I'm older, halfway across the fields of tall grass on the other side of the chainlink fence, but not out of sight yet. Roughly old enough you'd have to squint to make me out clearly. I've done my share of work and drawn my share of complicated hands at the card table--and to mix metaphors, always played it as it laid. We do what we must, because we can. I've hosted enough funerals, it's someone else's turn to let me rest. Been to a fair number of weddings and only my own divorces, so I'll call myself tired but breaking even. And I feel I've a life rich with friends. True fortune, indeed. But when push came to shove and life came around knocking, just to show me how much a man you can whittle down with bureaucracy and circumstance, the paring knives of god, art and edification were always what I put away first. I couldn't believe in a kind world if I didn't hold the hands of the dying as long as I was able to. Lonely work. And I couldn't focus on art with all those bills piling up around me like a tower of babel, yelling down at me in languages I couldn't hardly parse. Miserable work. Yet here I am. Ship anchored at a sandbar in the calms. A chance to catch my breath between the storms, survey maps and take my bearings.
I'm just not capable of thinking in anything but metaphors, I hope you understand. This journal will track the progress of my learning journey on this site, on my studying to be a programmer. Partly for fun, partly to climb that hill above me, partly to make that leap to a new career that might treat me better. Here we go.
Today is inagural; I had stuff here before, but it wasn't anything I made and I didn't understand it well enough to tinker comfortably. So we start from where we should always start: the beginning.
