I have projects forever. I have so many projects, I find myself arranging my projects in dependency trees which are so long, complex, computationally intensive that my brain gets lost wondering where to start. And I dare not pick a particular project to favor, because when I think about accomplishing it, I get lost in the dependencies, I really can’t figure out where it belongs. How to start? Hell, how do you define The First Step?

And I’m a dad. Being a dad means I already have daddy-dos and honey-dos numerous enough to occupy my time from here till my natural death all on their own. But as an honest, red-blooded American who grew up in the age of Woz and DHH and Spock and Dominic Giampaolo and Cyril Meurillon, I can’t just confine my aspirations to simple tasks. That’s why I have more prototype boards than I’ll ever solder, more wire than I’ll ever need for bodges, more technical manuals than I’ll ever read, not to mention kindle files outlining White Hat Hacking, how-to-build-a-robot guides, etc. etc. etc.

I’m into coding. I’m into speelunking and tunneling. I like woodworking and metal working and concrete working and house building. I like to read, and write, and compose music, and dungeon master. I’m addicted to Youtube and Podcasts and Kindle and Reddit. I have to set an alarm to go to bed, otherwise I’d find myself tinkering at 4:00am and getting no decent sleep for weeks at a time. Once I spent an entire month building sawhorses.

I have a 5HP 10” Grizzly table saw, I want a 12” one. I just bought a dual 48-core XEON workstation with 256Gb of RAM, based on the Skylake platform, I want one with a newer processor. I want a metal lathe and mill. I want a dump truck and an excavator and a hundred acres in the Rockies where I can dig tunnels and underground chambers. I drink two pots of coffee each morning, I want to learn how to make the coffee taste better than burned sadness.

Hoarding? I’m way past that! I have more beryllium (in the form of magnetrons) than the EPA would probably allow if they knew. I’m inspired, not repulsed, by The Radioactive Boyscout. I have a special way I shimmy through my piles and stacks so as to not fall into them and never be heard from again. And I dream of building the warehouse at the end of Raiders, where I can build shelves as far as the eye can see, and stash all my junk.

Anyway, I say all that to say this: fear not, if you’re just like me. I’ve figured out that life has meaning only if you lose yourself in your projects. One day, they’ll have to clean up all this mess. I’m hoping they find some value in my treasures.

And all the boxes marked DO NOT DROP - don’t drop them, seriously.