I never finish anyth

Let me show a recurring pattern in my life.

When 12, I was into robotics. I read many books on building gadgets, and on artificial intelligence. I accumulated spare motors, microchips, microcontrollers - anything I thought would be useful. And I assembled them. I know the feel of epoxy on my hands and how capacitor smoke spells. I assembled a walk cycle controller after the design that had worked for others, but they were dead bricks. I assembled crawlers that were mostly the same as working ones other people built. Their designs were not good enough, they needed improved. But my designs didn't crawl anywhere. Other projects came to the foreground. A working autonomous robot was never completed.


Fitness is not something I worry about. I could if I wanted to, but then I would wonder: what is the optimum? If I am limited in time to exercise, how do I maximize fitness? How do I even measure fitness, that is to say fitness for what purpose? Combat effectiveness is the best answer. Even though other forms of fitness would better match my needs, most of the time I spend in front of a computer, so that doesn't matter. Exceptional fitness is most needed in exceptional situations, and if Hollywood has taught me nothing else, I know that such things degenerate to violence.

So of course when I saw a martial arts class that filled GE credit I took it. The class met 3 hours a week. That was not frequently enough for me to improve so I also joined a club (of a different style) that met 8 hours a week. Nothing is mystical about jujitsu. Moves are practiced, counters are practiced, principles are discussed. Form is more important than speed; the perfect form has no unnecessary movements therefore it is as strong or as fast as necessary. If speed is focused on first, then the move is sloppy and slower than it ultimately could be.

I have learned that my muscle memory comes slowly. I have not practiced since it ended, I cannot perform most of the moves I learned. I have no illusions about my combat skills; anyone stronger could wipe the floor with me. The most I got was the ability to point out absurdities in movie fights. I could have improved more. At the end of the semester, vacation interrupted and I never got back into it.

I program computers. This hobby could become a profession. Small programs are easy to write, so I have had few problems in classes so far. But I want to do something more, a game. I study books on writing code, changing code, refactoring, debugging. I read about graphics editing, sound composition, physics, geology, and statistics. I know a little about everything required. So when people ask me if I am working on a game, I say "I am always working on a game." In other cases I can look back and see what I should have done different but in this I am still too close to judge. Now I see no impervious obstacles, it just seems that I am not making progress.

In all these cases I start something expecting to succeed. I value the coolness of the end over any risk. When I have an idea, I focus very intensely. It is not just an passing fancy; it is a project. Yet in my enthusiasm I set my goals high and get frustrated. If I started with a lower goal then I might progress more reliably. But where is the glory without the risk?

My father is similar. At first he has intense focus on his goal, but once he loses focus he is easily distracted and then procrastinates. We have half an acre of land and the back yard takes some time to mow and water. Dad decided that instead of watering the back yard by hand, it would be better to have buried sprinkler lines filled with irrigation water. Many new homes are built that way, but ours is older than that. So he started. He bought water rights; he bought pipe. On Saturday he rented a trencher and cut evenly spaced trenches across the property. And that is how our yard was for years. I would mow the lawn, avoiding the trenches. After the grass grew near the trenches I learned to mow with 2 wheels on either side, steering to keep the dirt clods below the blade. One time when playing hide and seek in the dark, Dad ran into a hole in the ground and a wrench nearby, he nearly broke his leg. Sporadically he worked on it, he even got parts of it working, but it was 8 years before everything was working and buried. When my mother wanted sprinklers in the front yard, she did it herself, with the help of my brother, and finished in a week.

I understand why I am this way. Why do I not change? This trait does not bother me as much as it should. The greatest inconvenience is in conversations. It is difficult to tell what I have done; instead I focus on what I will do. It does not worry me because I know I am a genius, and someday I will finish a project, and it will be awesome.