Many people (including myself) fear that we will be perceived as a fool if we publish on a post blog that contains a mistake, a public mistake. Nobody wants to be humiliated publicly. This fear is encapsulated inside of a quote that Sacha shares:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

But like Sacha, I’d rather know when I’m being a fool. At work, I never shy away from asking “dumb questions”. I’ve come to realize that there’s normally at least one other person who has the same question but they often shy away from asking it for fear of looking stupid. I’ve been that person and I later kick myself in my butt for not speaking up.

If you don’t put your thoughts into words — verbally or written — then its very easy to convince yourself that you understand something, when you really don’t. So many times in both my career and personal life I thought I understood some topic but when I started forming those thoughts into my own words, I realized I had gaping holes in my understanding. For example, my co-worker asked how and why we prefetch in our code base, and when I started explaining, I realized I had to refresh my memory on the cost of certain instructions and CPU pipelining.

In summary, do yourself a favor and when you are learning something, try and explain it someone. You might discover gaps in your understand. And that’s perfectly okay because your writing becomes a “history of change and learning”. This allows us to take a step back and honor our progress and allow us to remember our mistakes and lessons learned along the way.

References

Chua, Sacha. 2014. A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging.

“If you want to be successful, find out what the price is and then pay it.”

Scott Adams

I agree with that Scott Adams wholeheartedly. I also think this rule can be more broadly applied: “If you want something — anything — find out what the price is and then pay it.”

This quote reminds me of a story that my therapist recently shared with me. During this Covid-19 shelter in place, he’s participating in an online workshop lead by a poet named David Whyte. During the most recent workshop, one of of the other students in the program shared their life long dream: becoming an anthropologist. It’s something they always dreamed of but before they make that giant leap, they are first going to build a financial foundation and work in tech for another 8 years.

David Whyte’s response? “You’re probably not going to become an anthropologist.” Ouch — brutal honesty. But David Whyte softens the below and elaborates, stating that when we do something on a daily basis, we assume that identity and that activity — in this case being a tech worker — becomes part of our fabric. He’s right.

This short story struck a chord with me. And over the last couple days, I’ve been reflecting on my own one day dreams and aspirations, askingmyself what are some things in my life that I’ve been wanting to do but have been waiting for something — something in the distant future, only after I do x and do y.

And the first thing that surfaced was writing. Writing on my blog. I used to write much more frequently but every since I started my masters program in computer science, I’ve pretty much abandoned writing all together convincing myself that I have zero time to commit to writing. That’s nonsense.

So instead of waiting to graduate from the program — which is another 1.5 years — I’m going to chip away at my writing. Every day. Even if it’s for 5 minutes. Even if it’s just collecting field stones or existing content. Whatever it is, I’m making tiny incremental progress: and I’m happy with that. Little wins.

Now I want to turn the table and ask you if there is anything you want to do one day? Is there something you are waiting for? Or waiting for someone to give you their approval? Or for the stars to align?

I’m almost half way through the OMSCS (online masters in computer science), last week marking the end Spring 2020, my third term in the program. And although I’m looking forward to taking compilers next semester, my mind often wanders into the distant future , my mind fast forwarding to the time in which I’ll be graduating from the program. So, I stitched together a line graph that includes the classes, breaking down each term along with the courses that I’ve already taken (and will take). Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see from the above graph, I’ve historically taken one class per semester (except for the previous semester, when I simultaneously took information security and computer networks simultaneously); taking one class per semester takes the middle path, allowing me to balance school and work and family and other obligations and the millions of my other hobbies (e.g. singing, guitar). So at this current rate, I anticipate that I’ll graduate in Spring 2021 — 2 years from now. Seems like a long time away but it really isn’t. Because as they say: time flies. And It really does. Feels like yesterday when my wife and I were discussing whether it even made sense for me to apply and enroll to this masters program.

Last week, with just my iPhone and a camera tripod, I recorded myself hitting tennis balls launched by the ball machine and recording myself smacking a few serves.  The idea of recording myself was inspired from several articles that I had read from tennisplayer.net. To elaborate, I wanted to objectively analyze my tennis strokes — see them through a different lens.  And after I recorded the clips, I uploaded them up to my computer and watched myself and was completely surprised to find a major disconnect between how I was perceiving to hit the ball and how I actually hit the ball.

For example, below are two slow motion clips of my serve. The first clip captures me hitting my serve as I have always hit my serve. And what shocked me the most was that I couldn’t believe how little I was elevating off of the court when jumping up and swinging upwards. I always thought I deeply bent my knees and launched upwards. But that’s not the case.  On top of that, my left foot barely moved past the service line, opposed to (pros) landing up to 1 foot within the baseline.

After watching myself, I decided to alter my serve, focusing on one change: a deep knee bed. That’s it. No other adjustments. Not swinging arm. No tweaks to the ball toss — just singularly focused on bending my knees and shifting my weight evenly to both planted fleet. The results were baffling. Not only did I rise higher off the ground, but I landed two to three times further into the baseline than my previous serve.

When I first started playing ukulele, about six months ago, I would occasionally wince when lifting my fingers off of the nylon strings.  Because in the beginning, the flesh of my fingertips were fresh, no callouses. But slowly, over time, after repeatedly striking down on the strings, my fingers gave birth to a new layer of skin, a thick coat protecting them from the piercing pain caused by the strings.

And now my fingers are repeating the same painful cycle.

About a week and a half ago, I started playing my new guitar that’s strung with steel strings, thin and sharp. And last Saturday, I lost track of time, jamming away for a little over an hour. The next morning, my index finger was throbbing, a blister forming at its very tip. As a result, I’ve been unable to play any of my instruments, giving myself a week to let the blister heal (and hopefully develop into a callous). Even now, as I type this up, I twinge in pain every time my left index finger strikes the keyboard.

I studied Spanish in high school for four years and 10 years later, I’m embarrassed that I can’t form a comprehensible or grammatically correct sentence.

I traveled throughout Europe last Christmas and was impressed by the number of bilinguals. Most people fluently spoke a combination of English, French and German. My second language, Vietnamese, however, is barely conversational.

My Vietnamese stagnated 15 years ago. In elementary school, I was immersed in an after school program where I learned how to read, write, and speak Vietnamese. The majority of my friends spoke the language too, which was conducive to learning the language. But now, I rarely practice and have forgotten the majority of it.

I was motivated to improve my Vietnamese after traveling to Vietnam last year. I was disheartened by the inability to communicate with my 9 year old nephew; my weak vocabulary limited the dialoge. My cousins taught me new words but by the end of the trip, I couldn’t remember any of them.