It’s been 2 weeks without a chapter. What’s going on?
One week of that was vacation. I should have queued up a chapter to go out regardless. Last week I just didn’t have a thing to say.
It’s not just Tidy First?. I have a handful of pieces outlined in my head that I haven’t made progress on. I wonder what’s up with that.
One thing I haven’t been doing is morning pages. For almost 20 years it’s been my fairly consistent habit to spend a half an hour each morning free associating on paper. The rule for the exercise is that the pen never stops moving. Even if I’m just making squiggles, I keep moving the pen. Eventually I think a thought in words & write, “This is so dumb. Why can’t I think of anything to write? If I was going to write I’d write about…” And away I go.
Thirty minutes of that & the connection between thought & word is firmly established. The critical editor is silent because he (mine’s a he) wasn’t needed. Now I can get words out.
I haven’t been writing morning pages since returning from vacation. I wonder why not? I also haven’t been taking my morning walk (90 minutes of San Francisco hills). Time to get the habits back, because those habits tend to result in writing.
No dramatic conclusion. I just haven’t been writing.
P.S. If you’ve found something helpful in the parts of Tidy First? you’ve seen so far, let me know in the comments. If you have a PR or commit that demonstrates one of the tidyings, please pass it along & I’ll add you to the Learner Board.
I love this new way of looking at code and developing the urge to want to tidy it. Cohesion and Coupling are amazing concepts to ponder about and apply to coding, but I think it requires more practice. I am starting to see how tidying are about human relationships, because I feel that other developers seem to appreciate my tidyings. Will continue on this path and keep coming back to this page, to learn about a new tidying example, as they come. Thanks for this perspective, Kent!
Hi Kent!
How are you doing? I hope things aren't bad and you will get back on writing track in no time :)
Looking forward to new posts!