I could be better at paying bills, cooking, and cleaning the house.  Especially cleaning.  But who wants to be the world's best dishwasher?  Or Java coder?  Really - I am deeply into best practices, and while coding is significantly more satisfying than washing dishes (at least you are making something, and the patterns are arguably more complex; arguably, because we still don't have software capable of driving an autonomous dish-washing robot!) it's not enough.

What would be enough?

If I could polish bTeaching, make it a dynamic and widely-used repository of teaching ideas and techniques, meanwhile exposing the relationships between ideas to the semantic web and helping certain bright but behind kids I know at my daughter's school catch up faster on math and reading...that might be enough.

At least for now.

The always frustrating, exasperating part, is that I know or feel its possible, that I could do these things.  But life..responsibility..its not that, its merely a matter of realistic planning, discipline, and determination.  Leaf By Niggle  I love that story.  Tolkien expresses all this much better than I can.  But I didn't pay attention, the first time I read it, to the discipline Niggle learns

Terrified that I'll forget, or make a mistake, or that something bad will happen.  How can I live free from fear if I'm afraid of myself?  I don't want to make my kids this way either - responsible yes, but afraid no.  Is the difference just a matter of organization and procedure?

Writing - do I have the right to write?  What makes me think I can tell anyone what they might do?

Can it be that simple?  But what about dishes, feeding the fish, deadlines, svn commits and never, never making a serious mistake? Just write?

That's not all Laraine Herring said in Writing Warrior - a book I stole 10 minutes to read in Antigone Books while my 5 year old napped on my shoulder.  Also:  "You cannot dissect something until it is alive", in reference to a pedagogical method of teaching aspects of writing.  I love that sentence.  Not sure that I want to dissect it even after it is alive, but hits some truth nonetheless.  She said to breathe, shake and not be afraid to cut.

But the main take home message was the simple one: just write.

So many things I want to write.

About values, temporary and permanent, deep hunger and hunger for pizza, and why and how one can replace another.  Sort of like my favorite line from Granny D (paraphrased):  "Sometimes I'd look out into the desert and feel a strong desire to just walk out there and disappear.  And then other times I'd want an ice cream sundae with chocolate syrup.  Life is lived somewhere between these two extremes." I loved Granny D, Doris

I just added the WP Hide Post plugin - not that I have anything to hide, but most days my thoughts and musings don't quite rate front-page visibility.  Or, perhaps its just easier to put them down in type when I'm not imagining them plastered that publicly.  (no, my blog is not that popular - but a few of my friends and family visit it from time to time - and oddly enough I feel shyer to share random thoughts with intimates than to share them with the occasional random google-driven visitor.  Its sort of the 'do you really want to know...' game that some folks play in conversation - spend the time to draw me out if you want my innermost thoughts.  So maybe hiding them from the front page is a form of that.  Its not really a bad game, its just that one doesn't want to impose one's thoughts unless the conversation partner is honestly interested...)

So, perhaps the RandomWrites section will be the most-updated, but least organized...there may be a relationship there...