James Goodwin

View Original

Projects, projects, projects...

For a while now I’ve been thinking (pretty much every day) about projects I’d like to work on, if I had time, and now I have time. So recently I’ve been going around touching each semi-started/not-started project and seeing how I feel about them. I’ve got a coding project that has to do with drawing charts and graphs using block graphics in a terminal window using curses… I’m thinking about dashboards for systems that only require SSH and no HTTP servers or other tunnels… I’ve got a huge pile of photographs going back to 2007, and I’d like to select a bunch of them and turn them into some form of video art… I’ve got some code there too, not sure if it’ll be coding or just using desktop tools… Then there is composition of some music inspired/influenced by the video art… I’m not a talented musician, I’ve had some training in Jazz improvisation and I have some understanding of the basics of music theory… It is gong to be a project just to discover a workflow that produces something that resembles a tune… Returning to piano lessons is also part of that one… I’ve got a robot kit that I want to build and play with… I’ve got at least one short story that I would like to finish, it’ll likely lead to others… Then there’s getting my bicycles back on the road and getting back out… that’ll have to wait… And then there’s the enormous TBR pile that I need to develop an attention span to read my way through… Travel… well that’ll have to wait too.

I don’t really have a timeline for any projects, the things that are keeping my attention the longest right now are playing the piano ( I’m trying to record my sessions now to be able to go back and analyse them/start from them/harvest any good ideas out of them… ) and reading. I’m also just allowing myself to watch TV, have a nap, surf the web, go for a walk, clean the house or whatever, whenever… I’ve lived from one job related task to the next for thirty-nine years, I don’t expect to be able to just become immersed and focus over night. So far the lack of structure isn’t upsetting me at all, in fact I feel a lot less anxious, and that’s saying something in these difficult times.

Who knows perhaps time will reveal that none of these is really what I want to focus on… not a problem, nothing hangs on me starting or finishing any of them.