Let Me Go Off The Deep End A Little Here…
It’s Friday night and I’ve been working all day, so permit me some weird talk here.
Years ago, what seems like a different lifetime, I wrote a University dissertation on a concept that utilised what was then new technology to create something that hadn’t been possible before.
A few weeks back, I was sat realising that I’d spent thousands of pounds on equipment I never really used for anything, so I started playing around.
Then I used some simple programming skills to bring the concept I wrote about in my dissertation to life.
And, weirdly enough, last night I dreamed about my old University halls; I went to visit to see who was living where I used to live.
Today, I was playing around with AI and I realised that I should, and how I could, take this fun little project and make it into something serious which I could then put out into the world.
Which, cool story bro, I’m sure you’re thinking. But there are some lessons here…
#1: History – Especially Your Personal History – Gets Rewritten Constantly
I didn’t think about this aspect of my past for a very long time. It’s a long forgotten hobby. But then I started playing around and the crazy thing about human brain architecture is that once you create a neural connection, it’s there. Like muscle memory but far more powerful.
There’s a lot to be said about that another time; however, suffice to say that over the years I’ve had people ask why I value reading lots and constant learning, and among the many reasons why is that once you’ve learned something, it’s in there somewhere and you can pull it out when you need it.
But onto the headline; we constantly reinvent ourselves and every time we access a memory, it changes slightly to fit the context we provide it. And stuff that you thought you’ve lost to time is only that way because you no longer access and use that bit of you; you can bring it back.
If you’re ever in a flunk, the short answer is to think of the time in your life where you were most awesome and then pull the thread. That was you then, this is you now.
#2: Dots Always Connect, But Rarely In A Straight Line
Something from fifteen years ago shouldn’t suddenly become relevant one day, but it does. For me, for you, for everyone at various points in their life.
You are the result of everything that has happened to you at every point in your life; and for the most part, you’re also the result of a long chain of events going back billions of years before you were born. There are immeasurable dots across space-time and it’s well within your ability to connect them however you so choose, as well as to make use of any connections that pre-exist as well.
Wherever you’re from, your biological being is in part due to a rich cultural heritage; some way back, your ancestors were conquerors, invaders, some kind of subhuman ape, invaded, conquered, free, enslaved, innovators, monsters, heroes… those are all dots that you can connect.
On a micro-scale, everything you’ve experienced in your life forms a similar set of dots and you can use something you learned fifteen years ago to heighten what you can produce or achieve today.
#3: Seeds Can Take Years To Germinate
People get very impatient waiting for results. People also have a tendency to assume that results in any endeavour are linear. While there are areas in which progress is pretty standardised, real life tends to be a lot messier.
If you’re a young internet pirate, for instance, and you have business ideas, it might be that you have to spend years building the funds, knowledge and experience to act on those. Just like with actual seeds, a lot of these ideas will be duds; the time will pass, you’ll never get the right conditions, and/or something else will win out at the end of the day.
However, on occasion you get the right idea at the wrong time but then the right time comes later.
Final Thoughts
This article is a bit all over the place. Consider it a proof of concept though, because kind of like having ideas and then waiting for them to germinate into something better, I’ve had to write this article over a few successive days and will no dobut have to read it back at some point only to realise I didn’t say what I needed to at all.
It’s totally not just a mess.
Sees