Matthew Temple

I’ve spent the second half of today obsessing over what other work I can do, other than writing my book.  Some programming project?  Another writing project?  I base my worth overly on what I do.  I feel it’s necessary to do things in order to have worth, rather than some intrinsic worth concept.  But it’s nice to have some way to feel ok with your worth, without having to do more and more to feel that worth.  I’ve settled on watching TV and not going to the gym, but just sitting around here relaxing.  It’s hard for me to do, but I may have to come to the point of thinking that doing one project at a time is good enough, for now, my one book that I’m writing every day.  That is enough.

Day and night.  For work.  For fun.  Then I went my separate way from programming, and for the last four years, have been writing books.  It’s weird, I still feel the urge to program, and I’ll get out my programming tools, but then there’s no project, no driving force, to make me go forward.  All the things I want to make right now are books, not programs.  So I’ll make my books, which are kinds of programs meant to be read by humans, not computers.  And someday, when I’ve written my books, I’ll go back to software, I think, for I do have a future programming project I’d like to work on while I’m still alive.