Ugh.

I'm at home today, the first of two days of vacation. I had hoped to use this time to crank out some Industriousness, like a new article or progress on Xcode for Premake. But I find myself unmotivated, uninspired, lacking in enthusiasm or energy. Humbug.

One needs time to recharge now and again, I know. I ought to go out on the deck and read a book or scribble in my sketchpad; noodle around on the Danelectro or take a drive out Crum Creek way. But I feel a certain obligation to my work, to be making steady progress, especially on an "opportunity day" like this one.

To take the edge off my self-imposed guilt I've dropped back to structured procrastication, checking off odds-and-ends around the house like ripping the new movies to the Playstation, fixing the mower, getting Aiden some bike riding practice. This has a certain satisfaction, and if it lacks in glamour it still shortens the backlog.

I guess what bugs me most is the correlation between the vacation and the drop in motivation. I have an entire day available for my own work, and so I feel no urgency to get started. Coincidence or causation? Is it worth creating a false deadline for myself, or better to just let it ride? Push through and get something done knowing that it will be uninspired, or live to fight another day?

I have no answer. But these books on my desk could be put away, and those shelves could be dusted...

Update: Apparently I just needed to vent and organize. I felt better as soon as I posted, and by the time I finished decluttering the studio my brain was turning over Xcode ideas. I ended up making decent progress on the day.

Once upon a time I thought that I'd like to "be" a writer. That was once upon a time and a very different path from the one I ended up taking. Even so, I now want to start writing again, to find my voice.

Perhaps "want" isn’t the right word, entirely—I feel compelled to start writing again, in the same way I feel compelled to work on my software projects, even though it cuts into the time I could be hanging out, drinking beer, watching the game, playing Fallout 3. I've been resisting it because I didn't know what I wanted to write about. I still don't but realized, after much pain and effort, that it might be easier to just give in and do the damn writing. What’s the worst that can happen? (Don’t answer that.)

Right now I'd be plenty happy just to find a groove and get comfortable. I know (now) that if I wait for the perfect topic or for my life to suddenly become more interesting it will just be too late. Does that make sense? I see opportunities to write all the time, but I don't do it because...well, because I don't write. I don’t have a vehicle for it, and no opportunity seems consequential enough to start one. So here's to starting anyway, and to being inconsequential.

Thousand miles, first step, yada yada yada. I'll start with stuff I know well and which is fairly uncontroversial and hopefully avoid embarrassing myself too badly. I've got a bunch of productivity p0rn I’d like to get out of my head—not exactly state of the art but as good a way as any to get my chops back. For your sake, dear reader, I'll do my best to find some kind of insight, and I won't spend too many words on it.

It is pretentious, of course, to think that anyone gives a damn. And I'll admit to selfishness here: I want to create content that is useful or at least entertaining, but I'm really just enjoying the act of writing.

I’ll finish with a gratuitous Amazon Associates link for The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (a good book, by the way).

We don't tell ourselves, "I'm never going to write my symphony." Instead we say, "I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow."

And so it begins; I've earned my beer. Oh look, the game's on...

I suggested earlier that I needed time to figure out my plans, to "gain clarity" after a long ordeal of undirected effort and a general loss of steam. Time to ask "what if?" and "wouldn't it be great?" and "how could it be better?" Put another way, now that I'm grown up, it is time to decide what do with myself (I take encouragement from academic evidence that, at 38 years old, I'm right on schedule).

What a struggle! I've read about the phenomenon: Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance, Martha Beck calls it Social Self. Steve Pavlina cuts to the chase and calls it fear. I have a recording of a Marc Allen coaching session (I can't find it online, too bad) where he talks about the day he made the decision to become a musician and publisher.

I remember it so clearly...the first thing I thought of was having my own company and writing books and doing my music and having a big white house...and then I was overwhelmed with all these doubts and fears. That I'm not capable of that, and that it's way too much...I remember dealing with those doubts and fears, pacing up and down...arguing with myself...and doubts and fears said it was absolutely impossible...and I finally said to them, "It's a worthwhile experiment." You guys all say its impossible (and it felt like a bunch of guys, a whole committee inside my head, saying "It's impossible to go for all these things...it's never been done. It's not possible"). But I countered that with saying..."Let me try this experiment..."

It would seem that we fear the most that which we want the most. How very strange. Steven Pressfield says, in The War of Art:

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North--meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

If all barriers were removed, my fears faced, and the world spread before me, I am pleased to discover that I would still want to do What I Do, which is write software, my chosen medium of creation. I would focus on projects toward which I felt a need or a passion, rather than financial or social gain. In that spirit, everything I created would be open sourced and available to all. There is a real joy for me in sharing my work, in seeing it picked up and adapted to new situations, becoming a foundation for something bigger and better. I don't have any particular project in mind -- or more accurately, I have very many. Instead of hanging my hat on a single effort, I would rather follow my bliss and see where it takes me, if I could.

I am frustrated at the slow pace of my creations; much of the excitement of an original idea is lost as time ticks by and ticks by and ticks by with no progress towards reality. I am frustrated by my inability to respond to bugs and requests in a timely manner, by my inability to share knowledge as I gain it, by my inability to explore all the new areas that interest me. I stick with it, drawing inspiration from websites like StevePavlina.com and Escape From Cubicle Nation, and books like Finding Your North Star and The Diamond Cutter. I agree with their consensus: find what you love and do it; the rest is details. I've found what I love to do, and now I want to find a way to do more of it.

So I have given a fair amount of thought to "going pro" and building a self-sustainable level of income from my creating. I considered developing a commercial software product; I have ideas, but none that inspire the passion to justify putting myself through that wringer (except for one which is simply too big...I tried). Instead I am taking a cue from the bloggers: create many small streams of income -- such as AdSense and Amazon links -- duplicate them across many projects and articles, and repeat until...done, for some definition of "done".

Late night (for me), banging away on odds and ends. Cleaning up documentation, tweaking the website while GIMP downloads off MacPorts. I'm sitting in my office with a beer and a breeze through the screen door and Lamb and Portishead on iTunes. The kids are in bed and Martha is off to her pottery class, trying to get her chops back. One of these days I'll figure out how to make a living at this, truly my labor of love when a twelve hour workday is a good thing. But for now I'm happy just to have this chance to sit and create.