Over the past two weeks, I’ve gotten rid of a great many books, mostly technical books that either duplicated content or covered technologies I don’t need to know. My relationship with books is long and complex, but the gist of the story is that I have, for over a decade, been addicted to books. In a strange twist, owning books has been psychologically terrible for me because of the pressure I put on myself to finish reading them. This is the first time in probably six years that I haven’t had something to read through. I probably own between 20 and 30 books now, only four of which are related to programming. Quite frankly, they’re the only four that are truly useful at this time.
It was kind of a brutal process. Some books I literally kept because I was afraid I would need them. $30 books. Fear. It’s ridiculous. It first took admitting that, “I hate this book”, then it took actually stepping out and saying, “I’m getting rid of this book”. So many people complain about being busy, but they’re afraid to cut things out, afraid to say “no”. My situation is a bit weird, I don’t know anybody else who tortures themselves over unread books, but I’m willing to bet many people can identify with suffering due to their inability to say “no”.
It’s like breathing again. I haven’t been staying up late feeling I need to read or learn more. And, oddly enough, I’ve been incredibly tired. This could just be my imagination, but it feels like the stress of all those years has started to collapse, and now my body is trying to make up for all the lost years.
A decade of striving. What do you even do with that?
I can feel that this is a year of great change, and I’ve been wanting to explore some deeper things in my life with God. Lately, I’ve been re-reading my old journals. They’re insanely boring, but give me some perspective on just how far I’ve come. Last year I shredded Journal #1, and today I shredded Journal #2, which was written around 2011 and 2012. One of the most frequent subjects in #2? Having too many books to read! Can’t believe it’s taken this long. We’re all works in progress.
I’ve been watching hockey again. I haven’t actively watched hockey since high-school. But that was about the time I started turning to knowledge for all of my answers. That was when life lost a lot of its magic.
I have many friends I’ve been meaning to hang out with, but I’m giving myself the liberty to just rest. Some days I skip church (like today). I used to get lunch with friends every single Sunday, but lately I have just gone home and bought something special from the grocery store.
I don’t plan to keep this up forever, I am a social introvert, but I can’t explain how nice it is to just rest. To breathe. I’m a competent programmer and I don’t have to worry about my career. I didn’t have to before, either, but I chose to. I have friends who care about me, I don’t have to see them all the time, and before too long I will get back into the swing of sociability. I know who I am, and I don’t need to hold onto old journals to remind me. It may be different for other people, but for me it’s time to move on. One last read-through and it’s to the shredder they go.
There are things to do Tuesday nights and Thursday nights and that’s it, I’m done, I’m not making anything else a priority. Even Sunday mornings are lower priority. I’m done with that ‘busy’ crap.
I’ve wanted to write more posts on here but they haven’t been working out. Part of this goes back to my post about being financially bored, where once that savings rate is set, you just have to keep showing up and everything else is automatic. I could follow some obnoxious list of frugal tips, but that really won’t do anything for me at this point. Shaving $50 or $100 off my spending every month just isn’t worth the struggle of living by the letter, so to speak.
Honestly, one of the biggest things on my mind right now is Nepal. My personal savings is very nearly enough to start taking my plans to go there seriously. I think the goal is to spend two weeks there. Soon I plan to start mapping out what that visit will look like. Since books aren’t really around to distract me anymore, I may even spend a little time in the evenings re-learning the Devanagari script.
I need this post just to express these personal things that are going on in my life right now. This isn’t a financial post but one that I still very much have wanted to write. Once the journals are done, I’m hopefully going to be doing a lot more snowshoeing, and there are several movies I’d like to check out from the library. I think there are many good things in the works, so I’m pretty excited for this year.