I can't decide if it's good or bad that it's really hard for me to focus on one thing and see it through. For example, I really want to work on The Beaver, I'm really excited about it and there's a lot to do. But for whatever reason I got obsessed with 1980's Tamiya RC buggies the other day and I spent a couple hours yesterday researching suspension systems and designing my own printable buggy.
I feel like if I could stay focused on one thing I could get it done faster, but on the other hand I feel like my brain knows what it's doing, and maybe it sends me on these "side-quests" for a good reason.
In some cases I learn things on the side-quests that I need for the main quest. Other times getting distracted seems to help me get unstuck, or find a way around a problem that I couldn't see when I was completely focused on it.
Other times, like yesterday, don't feel particularly valuable at all.
I could try to apply some discipline to these moments of distraction, and I have done so in the past. There's plenty of other things in life, and a case could be made that The Beaver itself is a side-quest, so deciding what the main quest is and ignoring everything else is not as straightforward as it might seem.
For a long time I've been using the feeling of Joy as a compass, and as it gets harder and harder to know what will be important in the future, Joy seems more and more like the wind to follow.
So I guess it's OK that I want to design and build an RC buggy, even if I don't do it.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026