What's all This, Then?

So, the question has finally come up as to what exactly I'm trying to do here. Having been a fairly private person all my life (personal motto: "Keep a Low Profile") why the public introspection all of a sudden? Let's just say that I got to a point where figuring out what I've been doing all this time became important to me, and this is part of that process.

The trajectory of my life (as with most other folks, I suspect) involved lots of planning, directing, and thought in the beginning, followed by a rather long run of just letting things happen. Then, one morning you wake up and ask yourself where you are on that path, which can lead to the far more disturbing question of whether that place you aimed at so many years ago is still of interest to you.

There's a running joke I've maintained for many years, fed by the all-consuming "decision meetings" that modern businesses seem to generate with disturbing frequency. Whether the decision on the table was whether to sell the company, scrap a failed development effort, or to paint the trade show booth pale green, hours were spent in agonizing discussion, argument, and persuasion. Unwinding afterwords, I'd often muse "a hundred years from now, will anyone actually care whether we choose 'A' or 'B' today? Will they even remember that there once was a company named 'X' or even products that did 'Y'? And if they do, will they laugh?"

Being a technologist is like that, as technology (meaning science as applied to the creation of objects) feeds on itself dynamically, giving any one static bit of it a very short shelf life. Or as Douglas Adams once put it: "They were so backward, that they still though digital watches were really cool."

And I grew up to be a Digital Watch-maker.

And I, as middle-aged guys are wont to do, wondered if that was in itself a good and sufficient result to justify my life's efforts. Or, extrapolating a bit, whether I'll be happy being fed gruel in the Old-Digital-Watch-Maker's home, reminiscing with the other ODWM's about the time someone accidentally made a watch that counted to 13 rather than 12.

So, think of this as a bit of an interim inventory, assessing the random bits I've gathered up in my life which may be of some interest to myself and to others. And, contrary to the nerdy expectations of my youth, a disturbingly large number of those bits seem to be comprised of remembered experiences, relationships, life-lessons learned, and other non-numeric truths.

Like the pleasures of walking dogs in the snow.