Can’t sleep, and I’m gonna ramble. Stop reading now if you’re looking for anything coherent.
Two weeks ago when I was in the mountains and trying to do some thinking my brain was fixated on Survivor and Claymation Christmas Specials. Now that I’m trying to clear my head and get to sleep I can’t stop pondering thoughts that matter to me. Thoughts about past friends and girlfriends, and how it’s sad that we’re not as close as we used to be, but how great it was to have had the experience of that closeness. Thoughts about how maybe it’s time to put some roots down somewhere, but also about how much I’d have to give up to do so. Thoughts about the tradeoffs between a comfortable routine and taking risks. Thoughts about big technical ideas, how they could literally change the world, but of how difficult the challenges would be in creating and implementing those ideas.
It’s crazy. There is so much going through my head at the moment that I want to stay up all night thinking about things, sketching out ideas, writing some code to test some theories, and working out some details to figure out how tough it would actually be to move back to the Bay Area and stay there. At least right now, the idea of having a real home again, something I’ve not had since college, is a very appealing one. A place that was more than just a temporary spot to sleep at night — somewhere where I could call up friends to go out on weeknights, rather than having to drive 375 miles to meet up on weekends. And this is a weird thing for me — I’ve been a nomad for six years now, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. And if I stayed a nomad for the next six years, I wouldn’t regret it. But I miss my friends. I miss my brother. I miss belonging somewhere.
And the technical ideas are flying fast and furious. When I was with Accenture I created a prototype system for intelligent information storage and retrieval that I think was actually patented. Since then I’ve been pondering something much more extensive in which everything that we do that deals with information is stored, organized, and then made available to us in a useful format. Along the lines of Nat Friedman’s dashboard system, but using many more sources of input including how recently information was viewed, what that information means to the user, how long the user worked with the information, the context in which the info was used. It’s a wide open field, but the first person to do it right will quite literally make everyone who uses a computer about ten times more efficient.
And as a result of all of these thoughts I’m awake at 12:15 (or 1:15 if daylight savings hadn’t just ended) banging away at the keyboard. As soon as I’m done with this journal entry I’ll probably pump out several emails to let old friends know they’re missed, write a few lines of code, check out the Bay Area job and housing markets, and by the time I’m actually tired hopefully there will be a few hours for sleep before I need to get up for work. Insomnia sucks, but at least it’s insomnia with a purpose.