Short Thoughts

Restless in Rhode Island

There is no emotion more frustrating than restlessness. It affects so profoundly, in fact, that I’m not sure I’d even call it an emotion — it’s more of a condition, really. Whether it afflicts your entire consciousness, or just a body part or two, it’s not pleasant, and alleviating its symptoms is usually a top priority.

I’ve been awfully restless lately. Fair warning: this is a highly self-indulgent post. Read on at your own risk.

I belong to a tortured class of individuals you might refer to as “creatives;” I have a passion for making, for producing. It’s really more of a sickness than anything else, especially combined with my self-imposed and -appointed “profession” of software engineer, another incurable disease.

There comes a time in every creative person’s life — indeed, it’s a nearly monthly phenomenon; consider it the Menstrual Cycle of the Imagination — where you’re struck with the desire to go make something awesome, or beautiful, or useful, or just neat. This phase is, in almost every case, accompanied by a complete absence of anything that resembles inspiration. It’s a kind of restlessness of the mind, and it’s downright depressing.

Sometimes, it’s not even a lack of inspiration that’s the problem, but rather a lack of resources to execute. When I sit here and look at my {13bold} Dropbox folder, I see no fewer than 29 folders, each representing a project we’ve started, many of them even dating back to before Laurent started working at Apple. So let’s see: {13bold} has released all of two software products (three if you count Bowtie for iPhone); that leaves roughly 26 projects unattempted. Sadly, there just isn’t enough time in a day to work on all of them.

I find ways to keep myself entertained, of course: when I come off from working on a large project (like Bowtie), I’ll usually bang out a couple of mini projects with varying success. Quite frankly, though, it always ends the same: a boredom that only creation can fill. Perhaps it’s time to try something different.

Incidentally, if you didn’t chuckle or at least groan when you read the title of this article, go back and reread it a few times until you get the pun (spoiler alert).