I saw the signs!

I have mentioned that I like to leave things up to chance and fate quite a bit in life.  I wanted to provide some clarity to my comments as I think they might have given the false impression that I walk around with my head in the clouds.  I pay attention in life but I focus on the moment, the present, here and now.  I don't tend to dwell on my future all that much, part of the reason why I don't do that is actually ironically, because I don't like the feeling of not being in control - or to be more specific I don't like the feeling of being trapped, I react very badly in those situations.  I don't look to the future much because I don't want to see myself boxed into a position with no way to avoid it.  I am quite glad that we cannot see the future nor know what tomorrow will bring because like the legend of Cassandra I think that would be my undoing.

I pay attention to the moment, and make my choices and my decisions based on here and now and what I think is best for me.  I do pay attention to the signs around me that those choices might not be the right ones to take.  I read into things quite a bit as you can probably tell from my ramblings on here, and in a spiritual sense I believe that the Universe is rather like a book, with our lives we live being the lines of text that are being written as we live, but like any good book there's much more information being shared than what is written - you just need to look between the lines.  I try to do this with life, it may sound like spiritual mumbo jumbo to some, but I like to let the Universe guide me.  One thing I take to heart is the belief that the path of least resistance is probably the path you are supposed to take in life.  There will be obstacles at times to overcome but when the path you walk becomes increasingly difficult and the journey gets harder, there has to come a point where you have to stop and ask yourself the question, is it meant to be this hard, or is the Universe trying to tell me something?  Is it pushing me back on purpose trying to tell me that's not the way you're meant to go.

I am a programmer.  I have mentioned this before.  I also studied games technology at University and have developed many games over the years.  In my time as a programmer I have come to understand one simple thing - you can reinvent the wheel every time you need a wheel, if you want to, nobody will stop you, but if you have to reinvent the wheel every time, you're probably doing it wrong.  With regards to programming that comes down to the concept of reducing and reusing code from past projects.  If your programs were well designed you should be able to reuse parts of them without much effort.  There are a number of Game Engines which provide their own Integrated Development Environments [IDEs] for writing games.  For those averse to these terms, in plain English there are a number of programs designed specifically for making games that allow you to use an existing skeleton in effect that you simply add your own flesh to.  That's figurative - although to an extent it can be literal as well but that level of detail isn't relevant here.

What is relevant however is the fact these programs allow you to be more effective in your design.  They allow you to package smaller parts of your programs to make them reusable.  They don't stop you from doing everything from scratch every time you want to do it, but if you try to do that you quickly realise you're not doing it the way it expects you to.  Sooner or later you discover for yourself that the tools to make things easier for you are there, you just need to look for them, and learn how to use them.

I take that mentality from my profession and apply it to my life.  No matter what we do in life, almost everything we want to do has been done before, by someone, at some point, and they will have documented that process.  There is a wealth of knowledge out there for you to tap into, you just need to learn how to access it.  With technology and the Internet that becomes a lot easier.  When it comes to life however and the journey we make it becomes a lot harder to find reliable sources of information.  You quickly learn that most people offering you life advice are really only interested in selling you their books, or other products that the claim will make you happier, healthier, and make you live longer.

The conclusion you draw, or at least the conclusion that I came to, was that the only experience you can rely on is your own.  That provides a foundation for you to build upon, incorporating the things you learn from others, and the advice they dispense, where both of these fit into what we already know, or they cause us to stop and question what we have already built.  The hardest part of that whole process comes when you're presented with something that invalidates what you have already done, then you are presented with the choice, to tear it down and rebuild, or to ignore them completely and keep doing what you were doing. 

The question then evolves, it's no longer a case of whether or not the signs are there - the answer to that one is simple, they are, the signs are all around us, the real question is how do you know which ones to read and which ones to pay attention to?  How do you know what to incorporate into your own system of beliefs, and what to ignore?