All over the place.

I've heard a lot of advice about how to find your true calling etc, and most of it is very sensible, and along the lines of: "find something that you think might be your true calling, and try it." But I'm a little scatterbrained. Every week I find a bunch more things that I think "oh hey this would be very cool"- whether they're software, somewhat related to software, or completely off the wall. My question: how do you find the time to do them all? Lest you say "stop thinking about doing something and do something", I am, in at least three areas: work, cooking, and languages. Perhaps that's all there is; keep trying and it'll work out. At least I'm fairly certain that it will involve computers, cooking, and/or travel.

Unrelatedly, I'd like to repost a couple things from my friend Aditya's blog, because I think they're very cool and you might like them too:

David Foster Wallace's commencement address to Kenyon in 2005, because what's more inspiring than a commencement address? Also, the idea that "your liberal arts education has given you the ability to decide what to think"... fascinating! Talking about deciding what to think approaches psychology, and then in turn philosophy and spirituality.

And then here's a thing about mindfulness, from a psychological point of view. So there are two modes your mind can be in, narrative and direct, and those who meditate (or practice, commune with God, pray, train their minds) often can distinguish between the two modes more often. Sometimes I wish I read more psychology so I would learn more of this kind of stuff! Also, the scope of this drives me nuts: how does this fit in with all the million other theories of the brain?

Furthermore, and unrelatedly once again, while I'm thinking about scope, I was wondering the other day if scope is the main thing that makes programming difficult. And by "scope" I mean "holding all these scopes, and what words mean what in which places, in your mind." I could make a long example but I'm tired, so I'll just say "ponder this." Like I said, all over the place.