It’s full moon, I’m in that slightly beyond overtired stage where I’m not going to fall asleep anyhow, so what better way to spend it than writing something.
Dorje, my beloved 14 month-old son has been getting louder and more restless at night, so much of my waking time I feel like an extra in Attack of the Zombies. Not to mention the lost opportunities. At my recent holiday in Betty’s Bay, I found a perfect spot. Fast-flowing river, small waterfall, private. Naturally I leapt out of my clothes and into the river. But all-too soon we had to leave, with Dorje becoming niggly. I don’t blame him – skinny dipping doesn’t yet impart the same empowering feeling it does to adults, and there wasn’t much shade. Unfortunately the incident left me in a foul mood.
Christmas with family was also a haze of sleeplessness. I did manage to start work on a life plan book I’d come across. Simple concept really – plan your life as you would an office project. The most important project. Following from that was the horrible realisation that I’d spent more time planning certain projects at work than the details of my own life. So, I’ve started on the exercise, and had some pleasant insights. First is an evaluation of the current situation, and I rate myself highly in most areas. Later comes setting goals, and timelines for the goals. Ridiculously simple, I almost feel stupid writing this as if it were a revelation, but following the formal process helps, just as it does in office projects. Having said that, my most recent ‘project’, a database cutover was not formally planned, and I did it entirely differently to how I’d done all the others. I just followed a new idea, and it was the most successful yet. Perhaps it helped that the idea came from Anique. On the cover of my next MySQL book I’ll have to have her name in large, bold print, and mine in tiny characters (not that it could get any smaller than what appeared on Mastering MySQL 4 🙂 ).
I sometimes feel I’ve lost things I should have held onto. I reread my poetry from the mid-90’s, and I’m amazed at my creativity. I reread philosophy essays and can barely follow the train of thought, or the vocabulary. I remember not having a camera for much of my travels in Zimbabwe and Madagascar, and telling myself I’d remember anything worthwhile. Well, I travelled alone, and there’s not much left except a few scattered writings, and a vague sense that they were some of my most enjoyable and important times.
Perhaps it is all just end of year angst, and I’ll soon be nine-to-fiving again. Or perhaps not – websites like this certainly don’t help!
Some people have asked me whether I’d rather have waited to have had Dorje. Should I have planned it better! But no, I also believe there are spontaneously made decisions that are just right, in fact often more right than a carefully planned one (planning too often only makes use of the intellect). So, no, Dorje was a spur of the moment decision, and I believe one of the best I’ve made.