As I planned my first blog post since 2008, I was thinking over what would be different this time around from my eight month blogging stint five years earlier when I wrote for friends in high school.
Here’s the difference: In 2008, as a senior in high school, I was naive and just barely educated enough to think that I could, with enough analysis, answer any question. Time teaches you the world isn’t that simple.
This blogging reboot is meant to be a lot more fun for myself as a writer and any readers. In this spirit, here are three of my favorite, seemingly disparate examples of enjoying what you do.
I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but I always appreciate a good sports montage. In 2010, NFL Films put together a 10-hour video series highlighting the Top 100 NFL Players of All Time. I had no idea how high-quality NFL Films productions were until I saw this list, which plays like and has the emotional and intellectual impact of a sports-based TED talk.
Coming in at number twenty was famous Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. Years later, his four-minute highlight reel still resonates.
“Watch him play the game. Watch how Brett plays sports…When he throws a touchdown, he goes and jumps on the guys, and he’s celebrating, and he has fun. That’s the way sport is supposed to be played. It’s not always serious stuff, even in pro football. He’s having a ball, even at practice. That’s what you ought to be like.” – Steve Mariucci
Second, since graduating school, moving to a new city, and getting a new job, the scariest part of it all was having to cook for myself. It’s not scary due to difficulty. I just hate taking the time out of my day when I could be working on something else. However, I like saving money even more. In an attempt to cultivate my culinary knowledge, I bought Jeff Potter’s Cooking for Geeks used from Amazon. Inside, in an interview with Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry, I found this quote:
“Q: Why do you think there is a fear of cooking?
A: Honestly, I see this more in younger people, people in their 20s and 30s. I think our entire way of raising kids, educating kids, all of the pressures that we read about to succeed, and whatever punishment there seems to be for failure, seems to have translated to the kitchen….I think that’s really kind of sad…. We have come to take cooking too seriously. We’ve come to take ourselves too seriously.
For me, once it stops being fun, I’m going to give it up, because i really do think that you should have a good time in the kitchen. I think you should make a mess in the kitchen. I think you should put some things down the disposal if nobody really should eat them, and then you should go out for pizza, and it’s all okay. We don’t let it be okay anymore. That’s me.”
Lastly, one of my favorite computer scientists, Paul Graham, starts his textbook ANSI Common Lisp with:
“Donald Knuth called his classic series ‘The Art of Computer Programming’. In his Turing Award Lecture, he explained that this title was a conscious choice–that what drew him to programming was ‘the possibility of writing beautiful programs.’
Many programmers feel, like Donald Knuth, that this is also the real aim of programming…. Programming should be fun. Programs should be beautiful. That’s the spirit I have tried to convey….”
These are a few examples of people who are passionate about what they do. This blog will feature ideas I am passionate about. I hope you have fun reading.
Logan Frederick 