Over the past two days I’ve been going back over my old blog entries briefly during my efforts to port them all from posterous over to this site. It’s been a much lengthier process than I thought at first. I could have figured out a way to use a script to do the whole thing for me. This particular option became starkly apparent after porting over the first month of data. However, I realized that porting it manually was allowing me to briefly look over my past year of blog entries and better grasp how things have come along.

All in all it was a very enlightening experience. An awesome thing I realized is that my programming education has been pretty constant. Over the past year I’ve progressed through half of the MIT OCW Intro to Computer Science course. When that started to slow down in about October I picked programming back up by writing my game, Science Fiction Tower Power. The next month I dove in again and wrote the CSP Schedule Converter. This past month I’ve redone my entire blog. This next month I’ll be continuing maintenance on existing projects and returning to my game. I also hope to finish up the MIT OCW course as well.

I’ve also learned much about running a business. I’ve learned how to do minimal bookkeeping, organize and keep track of the ever growing amount of documents and files we create, all the while maintaining a social media presence. Robey and I registered FlamingLunchbox and filed for our FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number). We also survived our first year doing our own taxes for the business. I am still learning, and trying to push myself all the time. This review has really shown just how much my life has changed, how much I’ve learned, and finally given me an inkling as to what I still have left to learn.

Did I mention that this past Friday was the one year anniversary for better living through python? Revisiting some of my original posts and the pain I was processing at that time was difficult. For others it might not be as apparent, but it was easy for me to see how depressed I was. I was struggling. I know that many people were surprised that I jumped into the business and my blog right after what happened. They felt I should wait, give myself some time first, and then start working again. But I couldn’t, and making the decision I did was probably one of the best I have made in a long time.

Starting up this blog gave me back my voice after I felt I had lost it. Another awesome thing? I think some of my thoughts or feelings are resonating with my friends. Either my friends were going to make the changes they have in their life, or maybe…just maybe I’m helping. Maybe simply talking about my issues and problems and…feelings are helping others to do the same. If I’m lucky this is the case; if not I’m sure there is a seat waiting for me somewhere where it’s hot and sticky.

I digress, I always do. Reviewing my blogs I saw my progress, I saw tangible progress. Not something managed and monitored by multiple people who don’t care a lick about me. I saw the progress created by my own thoughts and fingers. I saw progress with my emotional processing and programming capabilities. I saw progress with my writing.

Even more amazing is how much my own writing resonates within me. I see the posts I’ve written and I remember how I felt when I wrote them. The churning emotions, anger, sadness or even despair at times that gripped me. I also remember how elated I was when I made the ships move across the screen for the first time with my game, or how excited I was when I made the command line spit something back out at me. Beauty in your own ability to create, whether it be through the connections in your relationships or threading yarns into afghans. Never deny yourself the ability to try. Creation does not mean perfection, it simply means to make something. And that something will be beautiful to you.