Thought of the Day #5
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together — Vincent Van Gouh
I just want the great thing. Lets be honest, who doesn’t. My ideas never make it out of the ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ stage because I mentally rush to the end. And once I get to the end, it seems like a daunting task so I don’t even start. The only place I don’t do this is when I am writing code.
When I write code, I start at the end and work backwards until I find a place to start. This week I was writing migration scripts and this part of the data model has some significant complexity. I simply started at the beginning, and just plugged along. Every time a new edge case popped up, I simply addressed it and moved on.
Life, unfortunately, is nothing like writing code. There’s no git history that you can jump back. There is no backup copy. Choices are permanent. This makes life scary sometimes.
This permanence of life, is compounded by the barrage of marketing societal pressures. Constantly telling you what to think and how to feel. Telling you what you should want in life and that without those things you should and will feel empty. They are telling you all the ‘small things’ to do in order to achieve a ‘great’ life. But if everyone is doing it, how can it be that great?
