I'm reading Ben Arment's Dream Year: Make the Leap From a Job You Hate to a Life You Love (2014), and there's a reminder in here about the choice between the fear of failure and the fear of insignificance. “Choose the fear of insignificance,” the author says. And I think: Hmm, actually, I'm okay with insignificance (or minor minor minor significance, in any case). Stoicism reminds us that after thousands of years, very little of this will matter. But maybe I should care a little bit. Since I've done all this work to minimize the fear of failure anyway. I might as well play on that side of the equation.

I've been thinking about this recently because I'm wondering whether I should take this experience in social business and make something bigger out of it. I could probably negotiate something with my main consulting clients so that we could get ideas or even code out in the wider world, or I could independently develop something that they and other people would be welcome to use. I haven't quite sorted out what that would be like yet, but I imagine it would start off as open source components, then possibly consulting and product development once I've established a reputation in that community.

Of social business, Emacs, and blogging, though, I like Emacs the most. There's something about it. I like the community a lot: interesting people doing interesting things, and a remarkably flexible platform that has kept me curious and fascinated for years. If I were to show up in a bigger way, I suppose that would involve writing more guides, and maybe understanding enough of the core of complex things like Org and Emacs itself so that I could contribute to the codebase. I tend to focus on workflow more than bugfixes or new features, though… I think there's something interesting in how people use the same things in such different ways. Maybe I'll write more about my evolving workflow, using that and personal projects as excuses to keep tweaking.

As for blogging, there are bucketloads of people who are happy to give other people advice on what to do and how to do it. I'm interested in keeping it unintimidating and useful for personal learning, but I'm more excited about and curious about those other two causes. Still, I can show by example, and I can offer advice and encouragement when people ask.

What are the differences between this slightly bigger life and my current one? I think part of it is related to the way that I've been minimizing my commitments during this 5-year experiment, being very careful about what I say yes to and what I promise my time towards. Part of it is taking the initiative instead of waiting for requests or sparks of inspiration. Part of it is working more deliberately towards a goal. It's not going to be a big big life, but it might be interesting to experiment with.