> It should surprise no one to realize that for the last three months,
> at least, and probably since I moved back to California, I have become
> a spectator on FoRK.
So what? This place has gotten much more interesting as you turned from
exhibitionist to peeping Tom. Of course, the bit-to-noise ratio has
dipped to zero, but that just reasserts FoRK as a scion of your life...
> It's not just FoRK, though, that I'm abdicating -- no more book
> reviews or clippings from the technical media or technological rants
> about convergent technology -- it's my entire intellectual life.
You reap what you sow, dude. You knew exactly what you were getting
into when you decided to embark on this lifestyle change of yours.
"Geek age," indeed. If you're looking for "sympathy", you can find it
in /usr/dict/words between "shit" and "syphillis" (give or take a few
words).
Gosh, if that ain't tough love, what is?
> In short, the VOID may be filling up, but at the cost of melting my
> brain.
Did you not think this was going to happen? How naive are you?
> More than half, perhaps two thirds of my days go by now worrying about
> people and my relationships, non-relationships, and
> dysfunctional-relationships with them.
Do you realize how truly fucked up this is? Are you listening to
yourself anymore, or do you post without thinking???
> HTTP has just fallen out the window. I can't say I like it, but I
> can't deny I took a fork in the road, and I can't take it back.
Yes, you can take it back. You're just being a stubborn bastard and
refusing to put all the pieces back in Pandora's box.
> For now, at least, I have committed myself to developing some skills
> and empathy and, frankly, chasing the fairer sex.
Such a lame way to waste your time. This is what MEDIOCRE people do
with their lives, because they don't know any better. You know better.
> It's just hard for my monitor circuits to watch me drop so many other
> exciting ideas on the floor.
Then DON'T DO IT, you jerk. The world needs you.
> Of course, in true Techer style, I'm learning at what I might modestly
> call a prodigious rate. In a single weekend, for example, I had to
> define or redefine six different relationships, all very hackeyed
> archetypal patterns, but it's still news to me.
At once you sound both braggart and pathetic. Really, Rohit, the list
is not a good place to air this. Send it just to me, or keep a diary.
Don't make yourself sound like a braggart and pathetic in front of your
peers.
> The corrollary criticism I'm getting from all sides is that in this
> headlong rush, I'm multitasking my real friends into a tizzy. There
> are lots of little slights arund the edges of a to-the-max schedule
> (e.g. the fifty some people I met in Boston in four days).
No shit, Sherlock. Worse, now you just pointed out that you *realize*
you were screwing over your real friends in favor of bigger, harder,
faster, more... and in fact did it on purpose. Oy. Even if it's true,
don't unburden your soul by telling us. We don't want to know when you
schedule us as "unimportant" on purpose...
> I don't know what to say about that. *I* am cool with small
> time-slices, and relying on my friends to realize I need to be this
> way right now. Yet, I know when I'm dropping people on the floor, and
> I may be too compulsive to stop.
Yes, and this is the bad kind of compulsive, not the good.
> I'm still searching for a new high, someone new everytime.
That is just plain ethically morally philosophically WRONG. People are
not here for your amusement.
> And I guess part of the addiction is that it IS possible for me, with
> my lifestyle, to meet so many people in the flesh.
This is just such a bad way to lead your life.
> I'm stressing right now, for example, about whether to go visit Ian in
> YVR while I'm in SEA this weekend, at the expense of working with
> Adam, seeing an old boss at MS, checking out Arospace (925 E. Pike,
> recommended by SaL), a 5% chance of being invited to Portland, bbq
> with MS contacts, a housewarming for Adam/FoRKcon, DAV dinner, old
> college buddies, and last, and so least I will probably skip it for
> the umpteenth time even though I care deeply about it, the Boeing 747
> plant tour.
Do you want to screw around some more, or do you want to change the
world? If the former, then do it without me. If the latter, then
unschedule everything but me and let's work all weekend.
> Dry not your crocodile tears, though. I realize these are problems I'd
> kill to have had a few years ago.
These so-called "problems" are completely in your head, fake,
fabricated, nonexistant. They are illusions that serve as excuses for
you because you don't have the guts to close the deal on a technology
that we know is super-important. Help me finish it, or lose yet another
chance to have a positive impact on the world...
Adam