Welcome! Just FYI: this really isn't a place for you.
It's for me. This is my outlet; a way for me synthesize and crystallize disparate ideas and thoughts into something concrete and useful. I want to be up-front with you: It's going to be rambling and discombobulated. But if you stick around, you might learn something new.
You can expect progress reports on ongoing (or god forbid, finished) projects, new things I've learned and conclusions I've drawn, insights I've gathered, results from experiments, and if I learn to make cool charts, you'll get cool charts. Who doesn't like cool charts?
The Generalist
I've come to understand that hopping between hobbies and interests, never being able to stick with anything is actually not just absentmindedness or a personal failing. The usual branding of this bent is Generalist, which to me has always carried negative connotations, simply because it implies not being good at anything. A jack of all trades, master of none.
To frame it positively instead, the opposite of a specialist who is really good at a single thing is a multipotentialite, who is decent/good at many things.
Multipotentiality is the tendency or capacity of a person to have multiple interests, skills, and potential career paths, rather than a single, narrowly defined specialization. It's different from a polymath, which is much rarer, who is someone who who is an expert/specialist in several different fields.
Until I watched this TED talk on multipotenalites I had never heard someone so precisely describe my daily existence. This is exactly how I am wired. I find almost everything interesting, and want to learn more about it. I move from hobby to hobby, from complete immersion on a topic to dropping it again in a 2-8 week cycle. And the years come and go, an endless cycle of shifting focus. Some things I regularly get back to (coding, writing, drawing), but most things end up in the pile of abandoned interests.
Hats
So I like to wear a lot of hats. Before I watched the aforementioned TED talk, I really thought about my many-hattedness in a purely negative framing. Why can't I stick with anything? It's not worth buying anything hobby related, I will just move on in a few weeks. And so on.
But now I see it differently. I have embraced multipotentiality as a way of life. Interests come and go, I embrace them wholeheartedly when the passion is hot, then gracefully let go when (inevitably) the next thing arrives. And since I like diving into lots of different rabbit holes, I am exposed to wider range of topics and contexts than most, which means I can draw conclusions and synthesize concepts from widely different fields. Generalizing, abstraction and correlation are my superpowers.
So this blog is my outlet. Here I am wearing my writer's cap, and for every post I will probably put on at least a couple other ones. Some hats might come up more than others however. Here's a very long list (feel free to skip ahead, as I said, this is for me, not for you):
First Class Hats
I spend time on several of these every day.
- Full Stack Development
- Learning
- Parenting
- Reading
- Wordsmithy
- Philosophy
- AI
Secondary Hats
Things I spend time on, but not as much as I would like.
- Systems Architecture
- Engineering Culture
- Cooking
- Commensality
- Running
- Fastlane / Entrepreneurship
- Music
Tertiary Hats
Things I dabble in (non-exhaustive, in no particular order).
- Space
- Meditation / Presence
- Storytelling
- Automation
- History
- Homelab
- Game Development
- Hot Sauces
- Drawing
- Gaming
- Guitars
- Chef Knives
- Data Hoarding
- Travel
- Bonsai
- Climbing
- TTRPGs
- Music Production
- Songwriting
- Singing
- Geopolitics
- Productivity Systems
And to not make this list obscenely long: I have shortlisted 100+ other areas I'd like to explore. As someone with a background in software engineering, Materials Science is an absolutely fascinating field, specifically how it outlines the physical limits of technology. Kayaking seems a perfect cardio alternative to running for someone (me) with feet issues. Dancing has emerged across all human cultures as a physical expressions of emotion and sensuality. Literal Hats, why are there so many kinds? Are there any that I would look good in? Blacksmiths can make freaking swords, how cool is that? How could you possibly not want to dive head first into all of those rabbit holes?
I have met people who say they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they didn't have a day job. I feel the opposite, like there's enough to fill at least ten lifetimes. And if I'm lucky, in the very best case, I have about 60% of a lifetime, or 2500 weeks of hat-wearing left.
So the most important question of my life is simply: Which hats are worth wearing?
I recommend Burkeman's book on the topic:
Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman
So I'm going write about whatever I feel like writing about. There is no theme to this, no grand unifying plot or narrative. No arcs, no structure, no classifications.
Just a guy with a lot on his mind.
Thanks for reading.