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Rolling Interests
I have a lot of personal interests, and it’s strange and sometimes stressful to realize that I am usually focusing on one at the expense of the others.
Here are some examples:
Reading (fiction)
Reading (philosophy)
Reading (infosec)
Reading (future / tech)
Vim
Web server optimization
Security data analysis
Creating security tools
Internet of Things research
Web security testing research / tools
Writing (philosophy)
Writing (tech / future)
Writing (infosec)
Music (listening)
Music (contemplating making some)
Podcasting (recording ideas)
…those are a few that come to me immediately, but there are many more. Oh, and then there’s these here at /projects.
What fascinates me is that when I get into a phase, it can last for months. And while I’m in that phase I basically ignore the other interests I have.
When I get into a reading phase, I’m reading many books at once, bathing in the new ideas, writing about them, etc. And I do this for a number of months without stopping.
But right now I’m not reading at all. I’m onto IoT study, and focusing on work and such.
What frightens me is thinking that I could just forget to be interested in those other things at some point. And instead of rolling into one of my many waiting passions, I’d just turn on the TV one day and never turn it off.
shudder
What if I wake up tomorrow or 20 years from now and I just don’t know what to work on? This is a nightmare scenario for me, maybe because it’s never happened. Or because I don’t see how it could happen.
But to me it would feel a lot like losing my soul. My projects are my identity. Not externally (which is probably true as well), but internally. People are defined by the problems they’re working on, the passions they have, and the activities that they are irresistably pulled towards.
If someone doesn’t have those things, what do they have?
I don’t know, but I hope I always have more passions and projects then I could ever hope to work on. Going from one to the next every few months, hopefully making progress on each, is what I consider to be the good life. Or at least a big part of it.
Notes
My current focus is on IoT study, on work, and I’m currently not reading much. I’m listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, which is similar, though.