"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." - Greek proverb
Raam Dev
The fear of doing it wrong
November 2014
I'd hoped to have published more this month. Heck, my first post this month--exactly 30 days ago--talked about my new target goal of writing and publishing 150 words. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I had forgotten about setting that goal until I reread the post while compiling this end-of-month review.
Terrible.
Or is it? As I wrote a few days ago in There's Always Tomorrow, it's important to recognize that tomorrow may not come, and that's okay. There's no point in beating ourselves up. We should recognize how we can improve and then take actionable steps towards improving each day. But to do that, we need to review. We need to take notes and keep track of what went right, what went wrong, and what we can do better moving forward.
That's what this new monthly review/summary is about. It's a way for me to help myself stay accountable by showing up at least once a month to review what I've published and to share a few thoughts about how the past month went.
For now, this monthly review/summary will focus on what I've published here on this site, but it may evolve into something more.
Back in 2011 I was publishing monthly Frugal Travel Reports where I reviewed my income and expenses for each month. I may start doing that again. Another idea for this monthly space is to share interesting links, articles, and even snippets from books that I've read that month. Continue reading
There's Always Tomorrow
I was doing a bit of journaling at the end of what felt like a long day, noting the list of things that I had completed from my task list. It was a very short list of completed items and I commented in my journal that the list was terrible, that I could've done much better. Then I wrote, there's always tomorrow.
But no, there isn't always tomorrow.
You don't know if tomorrow will come, but that doesn't mean that you should live in fear of tomorrow not coming, or that you should live with the assumption that it's not coming.
Instead, it means that you do your best today. You put in an effort to do the best, to make the day as productive as possible, to live it in such a way that you feel it was a full, complete, and good day, and that if you didn't have tomorrow you would feel content in the realization that you treated today in such a way that it proved you were grateful that you had it.
So when you find yourself saying or thinking, well, there's always tomorrow or there's always another day, realize that there may not be. And that's okay.
Prioritize
Be Notorious
Will Means Nothing without Action
Think
Unfolded Note
Some time ago I came across Unfolded Note, a project by Satya, a mother who lives in California with her husband and two young sons. Something had brought me there and I subscribed immediately. I cannot recall what it was. Every now and then as I'm going about my busy life I'll get an email on my phone with a simple unassuming subject line: Unfolded Note: #295. What's inside the email? Who is this person? Why did I subscribe?
For the past two years I've been struggling to share bits and pieces of my own life through my published writing, as had been doing for so many years prior. The struggle began when I learned that I was going to become a dad. How do I put into words all of these new thoughts, feelings, and emotions? How do I provide enough context and backstory so that my readers will know what's going on? What if I say too much, or too little? What if things are taken out of context? What am I trying to say with my writing anyway?
The Unfolded Note emails are never more than a few paragraphs, one or two hundred words at most. There's no backstory, and often very little context. When I subscribed I knew nothing about Satya and yet each time I see that subject line, Unfolded Note: #300, I'm pulled inside, curious what tidbits of her life I will hear about next, what thoughts or insights or stories she might be sharing with me in this new email.
So I'm going to try something new. One hundred and fifty words. That will be my target. I have so much inside that I want to share, so many insights, so many thoughts, so many stories. My goal from now on will be to not concern myself with sharing everything, but rather to share enough to tell a story, enough to share a thought or an idea or an observation.
There is a reservoir of wisdom within all of us that must be shared to be realized.
Python on OS X: [Errno 1] Unknown host
This is the second time I've run into this really weird issue on Mac OS X where attempting to run a Python program that uses socket.gethostname()
results in [Errno 1] Unknown host
.
In this case, I was setting up and running TouRSSt, an RSS to Maildir program:
$ ./toursst Checking feed Raam Dev Refreshing... ./toursst: error while fetching https://raamdev.com/feed/: [Errno 1] Unknown host.
I was baffled. Why is raamdev.com
an "Unknown host"?
After nearly forty minutes of Googling and looking through the code, I finally came across a suggestion to add the local hostname of my computer to my /etc/hosts
file and point it at the localhost IP address (127.0.0.1
). And it worked!
First, get the local hostname by running the hostname
command:
$ hostname Raams-MacBook-Air.local
Then add that to your /etc/hosts
(you'll need to be sudo
to edit that file) and point that hostname to the localhost IP address 127.0.0.1
. You should add a new line that looks something like this:
127.0.0.1 Raams-MacBook-Air.local
Now running the Python program works properly!
$ ./toursst Checking feed Raam Dev Refreshing...
Excuses
Find Time
Why I Run
Sameness
Endings and Beginnings
Today my daughter will complete her first trip around our Sun while breathing this Earth's air. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed. There are days I wonder why I'm spending so much of that time working on my computer, but I'm reminded that my need to provide for her is as much a part of life as the unrelenting forward momentum of time.
My life has changed a lot over the past year and with it has seen a change in the way I write, create, and share my thoughts and experiences. Its been hard to set aside time to write, time outside of what I already put in to making a regular income as a computer programmer. Its been even more difficult to find the energy to edit my intimate thoughts into a format that I feel comfortable sharing with the world.
The logical work of writing computer code has largely been the only thing that I've found the desire to write, as writing anything else feels so energetically taxing that it seems all but impossible.
I often wonder if my exhaustion is only the result of not getting enough sleep and programming all day, or if it has more to do with the energy that goes into soaking up each and every moment I spend with my daughter, an activity which has grown inexpressibly joyous with the passage of time.
Writing in my private, offline journal has itself been a challenge, but I knew that I would greatly regret not doing so if I stopped altogether, especially in these first months of being a father, so I push myself to write, sometimes in multi-hour marathons dumping the events and half-recalled thoughts from the prior few weeks where, despite having so many moments that I wanted to put into words, I found no energy or motivation to write.
Maybe living in the moment is just too enticing at times. And worth being enticed.
I started the paid journal subscription in November 2011, two years prior to the birth of my daughter. That was three years ago. At that time my life was quite different and a subscription-type offering felt like the perfect fit for me. However, that format no longer seems to fit my writing style nor my lifestyle and it feels like I've been ignoring that reality for far too long, a fact which itself has impeded my ability to publish anything at all.
As of today, I'm ending the paid journal and will instead focus on publishing free work on my site and putting together books that I can offer for sale.
All paid subscriptions have been canceled and, as promised, if you wish to request a full refund from the start of your subscription, you can do that. In any case, everyone who has paid for a subscription will be added to a special list and you will receive a free copy of everything that I release going forward, forever (unless you choose not to, of course).
I don't know how to express my gratitude to all of you who have showed me support since I started the paid journal. Thank you.
A year ago my daughter was about to be born. She was a week late and her parents had no idea what they were getting themselves into, nor how many sleepless nights lie ahead. I had no idea how my writing would evolve or change or how that event might change my goals as a writer.
I can say now, with certainty, that despite my relative quietude over the past year, my writing ambitions are as alive as ever. I hope that you stick around to see what's next, but, most of all, I hope that you hit reply on this email and just say hello. I would love to hear what's going on in your world.