Welcome to my most recent blogging effort. Unfortunately, these things don’t usually work out too well for me because my interests change so dramatically from day to day.
I’m a 28 year old defense contractor, and I still haven’t decided what I want to be “when I grow up.” You see, I have this obsessive personality disorder. Okay, maybe it’s not a disorder in the clinical sense, but it should be. When I undertake a new task or project, I live my life for it. I think about it 24/7, I lie awake at night fantasizing about it, and eventually, I burn out on it. It’s a vicious cycle of priority juggling that results in unnecessarily low productivity. When I return to a previous project, sometimes years later, I have to relearn many of the same topics from day one.
My entire life, I’ve had this sort of desire to change the world. To leave my mark in some way. It’s not that I’m arrogant, not at all. I really couldn’t care less if my name is remembered. I just want to accomplish something that changes the way people live, work, or love. We have no idea who invented fire, or who invented the wheel. Yet their simple discoveries have touched each of our lives personally. I want to be that guy.
For the last 10 years I’ve been trying to convince myself that the military lifestyle was a stepping-stone to bigger and better things. I just haven’t decided what those better things are. My entire life I’ve allowed myself to be held back by my own irrational fear of failure. I’ve wasted so much of my life worrying about what won’t work, that I’ve never taken the chance on what “just might” work.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by electronics. Now, thanks to Make: Magazine, I’ve discovered an exciting new world full of people doing the kinds of things I want to do. The most compelling aspect of Make: isn’t the amazing home projects, or their anti-establishment beliefs. It’s that every issue of Make: Magazine reads as if it were written just for me. They publish articles about how to overcome the fear of failure, or why you shouldn’t be discouraged because other people are doing more exciting projects than you. It’s like finding out that you’re not alone. Many of these people are just like me, with a laundry list of failures, setbacks, and hardships. But they keep doing what they love. It’s time for me to get in on the fun.
So I’m keeping this blog as a chronicle of my failures, my successes, and most importantly, my progress. I hope to look back on these entries some years from now, and feel proud of what I’ve accomplished.
Who knows, maybe someday I can change the world in some small way, and if this blog serves as a reminder to even one would-be engineer that everyone has to start somewhere, well maybe that’s all the change I need.
Enjoy!
Tim
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