Muddling through to direction
I'm going to just type and type, trying to discover whether and how I really want to continue.
So yesterday in church during the sacrament I realized that I did want to go forward. The thought made me happy. But it was a transient thought so I want to process things a little.
One thing that came pretty clearly was the sense that the next 2.5 to three years will pass very quickly. At the end it would be pretty nice to have created something alongside the PhD. Why?
Because it's a challenge.
Because creation of non-evil things is a good in and of itself.
Because I think that if I can do a good job I can see future opportunities open up.
Because there are byproducts like interesting experiences that will be gained and skills that will be developed.
A second thing that I realized is that I am less committed to this exact idea (SongPiper) than I am to the idea of building up a company. We can be flexible if we have to, we just need to do something that works.
One thing that I know is that I can't be happy building my own business if it means that I will be doing a crummy job at work (school). I have to be doing a great job at work (school). And I want to do a great job bringing this thing to life. And it is fully dead right now, good and dead. But it can come to life.
I really believe in the concepts of diligence and temperance. I want to take this as an opportunity to experiment with these concepts and bring them to higher forms and combine them with other principles like patience, hope, and faith.
About patience. I am not intrinsically patient. And I only believe in certain forms of patience: impatience can be a virtue also. Sometimes impatience is linked with the recognition that things are not as they should be. And the action required to change them. That's good impatience. But for me impatience is also linked with a fear that something will never change. For example when I began my graduate program in Baltimore I wanted me PhD to come quickly in part because I doubted whether it would come at all. Patience in working toward your goals is absolutely necessary if you are going to do something large. So what does that patience come from? For me it comes from two different sources. The first source is a combination of hope and vision. It is a belief that the thing you are working for 1) will come to pass if you persevere and 2) will be worth the work, time and effort. I guess the first source is a recognition that the price is worth paying. The second source of patience is akin to reading a good book while standing in line. If I can figure out how to live a good life while working toward the good thing then waiting isn't so bad. The second source of patience, then, just comes from lowering the price you are paying. Anyway, if patience means that you learn to live with being dirty so you stop being excited to shower--it could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the situation.
That's what you get when you just start typing: tangents. My biggest fear with moving forward is that I need to be focusing on something more important. So here is the deal: I think the time is here to focus on building something. And hopefully that something can be flexible enough to begin to fill real needs. Or maybe this something is just a toy something. And if so perhaps I can learn lessons that will be valuable as things progress. Here we go.
How about this: the most intelligent, living approach is not an a priori approach but rather an iterative feedback approach. If that is the case then I don't need to know everything from the beginning. In fact it would be a mistake to decide everything at the beginning. So perhaps it is more important to move forward and develop some skills and start listening to feedback than it is to worry about whether I am doing the very most important things right now.
Alright, enough. Let us begin. SongPiper is a learning and a doing company. We emphasize quick implementation of fun ideas and simplicity rather than elaboration. If a project isn't fun we don't do it. Or at least we step back and figure out how to do it right. Or we find something that is fun. Because we learn through feedback and iteration we try to make the creation-feedback loop as fast as possible.
So yesterday in church during the sacrament I realized that I did want to go forward. The thought made me happy. But it was a transient thought so I want to process things a little.
One thing that came pretty clearly was the sense that the next 2.5 to three years will pass very quickly. At the end it would be pretty nice to have created something alongside the PhD. Why?
Because it's a challenge.
Because creation of non-evil things is a good in and of itself.
Because I think that if I can do a good job I can see future opportunities open up.
Because there are byproducts like interesting experiences that will be gained and skills that will be developed.
A second thing that I realized is that I am less committed to this exact idea (SongPiper) than I am to the idea of building up a company. We can be flexible if we have to, we just need to do something that works.
One thing that I know is that I can't be happy building my own business if it means that I will be doing a crummy job at work (school). I have to be doing a great job at work (school). And I want to do a great job bringing this thing to life. And it is fully dead right now, good and dead. But it can come to life.
I really believe in the concepts of diligence and temperance. I want to take this as an opportunity to experiment with these concepts and bring them to higher forms and combine them with other principles like patience, hope, and faith.
About patience. I am not intrinsically patient. And I only believe in certain forms of patience: impatience can be a virtue also. Sometimes impatience is linked with the recognition that things are not as they should be. And the action required to change them. That's good impatience. But for me impatience is also linked with a fear that something will never change. For example when I began my graduate program in Baltimore I wanted me PhD to come quickly in part because I doubted whether it would come at all. Patience in working toward your goals is absolutely necessary if you are going to do something large. So what does that patience come from? For me it comes from two different sources. The first source is a combination of hope and vision. It is a belief that the thing you are working for 1) will come to pass if you persevere and 2) will be worth the work, time and effort. I guess the first source is a recognition that the price is worth paying. The second source of patience is akin to reading a good book while standing in line. If I can figure out how to live a good life while working toward the good thing then waiting isn't so bad. The second source of patience, then, just comes from lowering the price you are paying. Anyway, if patience means that you learn to live with being dirty so you stop being excited to shower--it could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the situation.
That's what you get when you just start typing: tangents. My biggest fear with moving forward is that I need to be focusing on something more important. So here is the deal: I think the time is here to focus on building something. And hopefully that something can be flexible enough to begin to fill real needs. Or maybe this something is just a toy something. And if so perhaps I can learn lessons that will be valuable as things progress. Here we go.
How about this: the most intelligent, living approach is not an a priori approach but rather an iterative feedback approach. If that is the case then I don't need to know everything from the beginning. In fact it would be a mistake to decide everything at the beginning. So perhaps it is more important to move forward and develop some skills and start listening to feedback than it is to worry about whether I am doing the very most important things right now.
Alright, enough. Let us begin. SongPiper is a learning and a doing company. We emphasize quick implementation of fun ideas and simplicity rather than elaboration. If a project isn't fun we don't do it. Or at least we step back and figure out how to do it right. Or we find something that is fun. Because we learn through feedback and iteration we try to make the creation-feedback loop as fast as possible.
posted by Douglas H. at 10:57 AM
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