Brute force approach

This morning I put on my running clothes, as the probability of me heading out for a run greatly increases when I am already dressed for it. And after three hours of coding, interrupted by every sort of family member calling on a Sunday, I decided it was time to throw myself out the door.

The first few steps into the run, I started thinking about how my ability to code has gotten a lot better in the last couple of days. I like decomposition - it suits me. My brain likes to break things up into smaller parts and see the relationships between things.

In the next stage of the run, I thought about the irony, that as I seemed to be getting the hang of this coding thing, I seemed to be applying the 'brute force' approach to many other aspects of my life. And in the true spirit of stream-of-consciousness, I wondered if there was some way to logically decompose the other aspects in my life so that I could accomplish more tasks with less work.

Another half-mile, and I realized that there was something fundamentally difficult about this challenge - I couldn't seem to assign a priority to any one task over the other, or find a natural way to use one task to move another along - they all seem to meld into one 'big ball of mud'.

On the last half mile towards home, I let myself take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of 'brute force'. While it might not be the most elegant approach, it has meant that I am still keeping things ticking along. My house is a mess, my family are feeling a little neglected, my runs are more like a slog than a jog, I haven't cooked a healthy, homemade dinner in a long while, and I could really use a make-over.

But we are fed, we are sleeping (perhaps less than we would like), we are welcoming and sending off visitors who all seem to be flocking to San Francisco at the same time as the rest of life is converging to a point, and I feel strong in what I am trying to do, even if I fall flat on my face.

Coming into the homestretch, the Indigo Girls', Galileo came on, and I felt a sense of warmth about sometime in the future, when Amelia is trying to juggle lots of things in her life, and she asks me for advice on which approach to take, I can smile and tell her that in certain times in our life, there is nothing wrong with taking the 'brute force' approach.