Some of you have requested that I keep you up to date on the CMS project. And it is truly a project now. We've had meetings and everything. So for those of you who've reached out wanting to commit time, you should have received the spec doc for what I think we should be doing. I'm looking forward to feedback on that and to put a shovel in the ground on the code. Once some more people have given feedback I'll likely share the spec thing here too.

I have another live stream planned for this afternoon at 15.00 CET / 9 AM EST on my Twitch. Subscribe beforehand if you want to be notified. This one should be about trying the newly announced Livebook project. Should be pretty fun :)

I've also raised the question about what the next one should be about and it looks like it should be the Membrane framework, so media processing, if you think otherwise, shift the poll. There's also been questions about archiving and leaving the videos up for a bit after. I might do that once I feel things are getting a bit more polished, I'm aware live can be tricky to fit into your life.

Client work is rolling forward very well. Things are good.

The things that set us apart are not simple

If you can’t fuck it and it doesn’t dance, eat it or throw it away.
- Synners, Pat Cadigan 

Sometimes it feels like one should just focus all the effort at becoming a master of your craft or investing all of your self and soul into your professional efforts. That's how you succeed right?

I don't think that's the case.

At a glance my most valued marketplace skill is programming. That's what I was paid a salary to do and that's what I've leveraged into an independent career. But what I find consistently most valuable in my work is an absolutely ludicrous mix and mash of skills, interests, personality traits and intolerances.

I've had good feedback on my artistic sensibilities, my rough sense for visual design and an okay eye for that stuff. People seem to like the way I've put together Underjord. I've since had a designer refine it because I was at my limit. This comes from years of toying around with art, design and visuals both on the computer and with pen and paper. I did art primarily in what is sort of our high school.

Projecting a stylistic sense of a movement or grasping nuances of a culture and being able to either be part of or interface with it doesn't come from some blog post I read. It comes from having spent time with punks, hippies, circus freaks, entrepreneurs, martial artists, programmers, sales people, educators, hipsters and many other kinds of people and to some extent being curious about them. Sometimes being one of them. Sometimes very much not. This influences my writing, my design, the systems I build and the choices I make.

Knowing what you want to do, what you don't want to do and what you need more or less of in life, as well as how that shifts around is a tricky one. I think lived experiences  are the best way to figure that out. I don't think there are many options. I recommend dancing around a fire, late summer evening conversations, getting into varying kinds of trouble, avoiding other kinds, spending time in water, pushing your body, challenging your presumptions, trying skills that aren't stereotypical to you, doing comforting things, spending time not doing much, spending time doing tons. I like saunas, especially when I can dunk myself in cool water afterwards.

It isn't that variety is the spice of life. Though I guess that checks out for me. It is that without having had a wide variety of experiences I would have no idea what I like and don't like. And without maintaining a practice of going away from the computer and digging in the garden/having tea with my wife/going for a walk I would be less of a person and significantly less satisfied in life. And I struggle to do it. I tend to get stuck on the doing. But going to a festival with hippies, punks and fire almost yearly is actually important. Travelling to visit family in the northern parts of Sweden. Getting the beds ready for planting. That's where I grow the most. Note that the pandemic has really limited this recently and yeah, I feel it.

I'm not sure you can be the best programmer either without expanding your horizons. If you build technical perfection without concern for the outside world the outside world will still have an impact when it meets your creation.

There is this Heinlein quote that I think captures some of this.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

This goes into competence porn and sort of renaissance man territory and I think that sort of ambition often glosses over who will be doing the dishes and watching the kids while you do a shitty job learning how to butcher that poor hog or spend time reading The Art of War. But interpreted a kindly as possible. Yes. Absolutely. Learn many things, let yourself be more than one thing, care about the practical as well as the social, the emotional and dare I say the spiritual? You can certainly have specialities and you certainly don't have to know how to do everything. But remember that you can be many things. And you probably are.

If you feel things about this you can express that via email lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

I appreciate your attention. Thanks for reading.

- Lars Wikman