Success:

No more tech “work” outside of the job. No more side projects. (Which part of me regrets, since side projects are a key to staying sharp and up-to-date.)

Fail:

Must reduce Twitter, Facebook, and social networks so far – optimize, but not remove completely.

Reading non-tech books… still slow.  Reading news/articles/blogs online is much more tempting, but isn’t that a junk diet?

Now I think I’ve been hard on myself in getting myself to write in this blog. Hard on myself, like I am on many other things. So I’lll relax a bit, and be happy even if some of the stuff I’m writing remains in drafts. I should be satisfied that I get to empty my head.

I saw my psychiatrist last Saturday. (It’s a “checkup” for most doctors, but a “talkup” for those like me who can’t be examined with physical evidence.) I told him about some recent problems with obsession. I was fanatically obsessed about being perfect in something. I was getting very angry with myself for falling short.

So in writing, I shall let go.

11 days into the new year, and I’m struggling. I need your help in getting my blog started again.

I know I have a lot of things to write about, but I need more convincing. Or encouragement.

If you know me, please suggest a topic that you know I could write about. Or ask a question.

Help me remove my self-censorship filters, too.

I’m not going to have a “summary of 2008″ post, as others do. While I’d love to, I don’t feel I could spare all the details here. Instead, I’ll just share the insights I’ve had through the past few weeks, as well as what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been a computer techie for a long time. I made it my course of study, and then my work. I made it my recreation as well. That is what I’m going to change.

A big part of 2008 was unhappiness. A big part of that unhappiness was having no time for other things – in my definition. Through the years I have had some tech-related goals which I didn’t achieve: master many programming languages/systems, become a successful/famous open source developer. My own work for the past few years was good, but these goals lay outside of work. So, what I wanted to do was work on tech for work, and even more tech after work.

That has to go. A number of events have shown to me that I was obsessing too much with things – an unhealthy form of perfectionism. Perfectionism that leads to unhappiness because the Perfect can’t be achieved. So now I’m recalibrating my goals and setting my life direction to have less tech overall.

Less tech overall means better work. I’ll put all my tech effort and study into work. Work is good and it challenges me. That reduces the need to find an outlet elsewhere. Work also gives me other people to work with, other people to teach. As they learn and do their own tech thing, I am happy that others get to do it. One of my frustrations has been, why don’t more people do this-and-that – as since they don’t, it’s my obligation to do it. If other people do it, then I feel I don’t have to.

“Writing more” is the first 2009 resolution I made. I’m now trying to live it up by blogging, again.

I have been writing in the past weeks, on paper notebooks. The idea is to refine and publish them online, but that hasn’t happened. This practice is effective in clearing my head, the only useful practice I picked from Allen’s Getting Things Done (which I’ve only read a month or so ago.)

I also thought my Twitter tweets would be useful as  blog posts when expanded, but it hasn”t happened.

What to write: if I continue this blog, I feel that it will take a turn away from tech and towards more eclectic set of topics. I’m not comfortable with blogging personal stuff – not because I don’t like sharing (I do that on Twitter) but because I feel it’s a vain thing to do. If I overcome that handicap, personal posts willl appear here. Less tech because I feel I’m making a shift away from doing tech stuff in my personal/free time.

How to write: I find that being self-conscious has hampered  my previous attempts at blogging. I had to make it live up some high standards I set for myself. No more. I shall let go.

I hope to keep this up!

I previously said I was unswitchable. I took a side step.

I got a great deal from a friend selling his Mac Mini G4. Still in pristine condition.

I’m using it to get acquainted with Mac OS, and to see if Objective-C/Cocoa programming is for me. 

Even if I’m into mobile dev, I’m not going into Mac for iPhone. Apple has deprecated the G4 and it cannot run the iPhone dev kit. And,  I won’t spend a crazy amount of money on an iPhone.

Now, I have a reason to blog – to greet people coming here from the Philippine Blog Awards site. I have judged a few categories.

I may be a delinquent blogger, but I remain a voracious blog  reader – most especially for tech and work-related content.

I haven’t been attending blogger events for the past year and a half, so this is In Real Life catching up time.

We need the real Philippine Internet history. Most Pinoy Internet users don’t know it at all. Some, might know the short version. Few know about things that really happened.

These are the juicy bits that would be polished over in an official “textbook” Philippine Internet story.  These are the “off the record” stuff that either get circulated as hearsay and urban legend, or kept secret. This is because the Philippine Internet History is not all rosy.

This comes into mind because the ph-cyberview mailing list anniversary is coming up.

A few years ago, I contributed to the Philippine Internet Review publication and wrote about Philippine Internet History. However, this was just based on my notes and personal research off the Web.

We need it written by a real journalist, with interviews and first-hand information.

Two surprising things have happened.

First, I have admitted to myself that I have grown tired of coding.

Second, I have been reading business books, and will be reading some more. I choose these from the Personal MBA reading list.

How did this happen?

After being a programmer for 23 years – since age 11 – I have grown tired of it. I do code for work, but I no longer relish the thought of coding in my spare time. No personal hobby projects. Sadly, no open source contributions – a cause for open source angst. Who would write Pinoy open source now? I still hope some of the younger generation pick it up. Perhaps that itch to scratch will find its way back to me.

Will it come back? Perhaps. It could just be a phase.

I now find analyzing requirements and writing specifications and designs interesting. I used to think that this was a boring, or even unnecessary activity – just hack away on hardcore tech! I guess understanding this stuff is part of growing older – and wiser, I hope?

I still love software development. The difference is that I see it from a wider perspective.

Thanks to Keith Rull! He interviewed me as the first Pinoy developer in his interview series.

Things I’d like to add: to get to do stuff, you need to put in a lot of hard work – and often, you’ll think about the road not taken. And, nostalgic oldtimers might be surprised when I say that the kids of today have it better. I must add – that’s why expect much much more of them, and then get disappointed.

Sharing your stuff is made much easier if someone asks you questions. I remember the old interview meme. I did not remember it just like that. Instead, WordPress told me that I got a new comment.

Now, I am restarting my blogging once more.