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Heart & Soul
It's hard to believe that less than two years ago I was watching a video much like this on YouTube, but instead it was a demo for a university with some proprietary software. I don't want to sound flabbergasted, but I really am. What the open source and hobbyist community can do blows my mind. I think what I respect the most is their determination and willingness to power through their project no matter how may obstacles they face. I can't count how many times I have given up on a section of work for a client because it was “too hard”. Even though it was payed work, I just didn't want to continue because I knew my heart and soul wasn't there.
Heart and soul is really what drives me, and I'm sure many other developers, to do something great. I need determination and the patients to do something worth my time. The heart and soul of an open source developer is what many of us need to model after. They persist on doing something great through their system. No matter how big, or how small their project is, they care about it to its greatest extent. In some aspect we all need an “open source” project.
We are currently working on something that I continue to pour my heart and soul into. I'm not sure how it's going to unfold, and I have no idea how people are going to accept it, but I know that I care about this to its greatest extent. I am now beginning to realize, this is my “open source” project. This is the project I care about no matter how many people see it, nor how miniscule it might be in the vast scale of the internet. I hope this burning fire inside of me never dies.
Old Habits Die Now
I was reading Paul Graham's Disconnecting Distraction today. A very ingenious article at the least and what it pointed out to me was my life. A giant distraction elephant named internet was sitting on my computer day-to-day, just waiting for me to notice it.
Recently, I have become more self-aware of my actual problems of distraction. But no matter how many feeds I put inside of my RSS Reader, nor ho many applications I close, it all somehow leads back to the distracting ways of the internet. This is a pretty scary thing, for what keeps me passionate about creativity is the internet. The internet is how I function, and how I get through my day. The internet is my most valued tool.
A few weeks ago, I asked myself how I should deal with this. If I rely and function on the internet, how can I get any work done while I'm not depending on it? I then found an invaluable tool that would save me from mnths of pain. Say hello to Freedom. Freedom is an application that allows you to set allocated time of network silence. It's almost and basically perfect, for the only way to shut it off if you need the internet is to reboot your mac. I now have load of time on my hands because I set Freedom to give me 2 hours of network silence in the morning, and a few more hours in the afternoon. Freedom has given me freedom.