...And then, in as much as it had seemed nearly impossible to keep myself awake 3 hours before, I found myself back in the realm of consciousness, unable to return to dreamland, despite my efforts to do so. The clock read 2330. A few minutes later, and here I am.

[Bitscape gets up, ventures forward into the trash buffer (now also known as the war zone), shuffles a bunch of cables around, and eventually ends up with the hub back in the closet, and something resembling audio output from Argo's ogg player coming out of the main speakers.]

...

[Bitscape turns off the main receiver, deciding that Argo's local speakers will do just fine by themselves for this moment, given the minute decibel levels needed.]

Well...

[Bitscape again ventures into the war zone. This time, it's the keyboard cables. Returns to console, puts keyboard on lap, pushes chair back, leans it against the wall.]

I may just put myself to sleep again yet.

I have a feeling that last night's rambling may have given the impression that I am against goals altogether, or that they currently have no place in my life. This time around, I'll attempt to clarify things a bit more, for myself as much as for anyone else who happens to be reading this.

I certainly have some goals, whether I state them as such or not. The further development of this web page, as well as the Content Collective. It could be said that one of my implicit goals is to finish the code I started on the Collective's color code, and have it online in use by the end of the month at latest, or optimally next week.

One goal I had set and didn't reach by the end of December was to get the Collective's codebase into what I would consider a releasable state. I made significant strides in that direction. It's still not quite there. That's another short term goal I have for that over the next few weeks.

Finishing my revamping of The Lair was an implicit goal I had yesterday. (Whether it, or any of these, for that matter, are truly realistic or not is another matter entirely.) I didn't make that all the way either, so I deal with what is and move on.

And yes, I think there is also merit to having offline goals. ("offline" being defined as goals one does not publish on a public web page.) I have had, and continue to have a few of those myself, some of which I have fallen down on miserably.

So why last night's rant? Perhaps what I dislike is not goals per se, but goals that are either (a) imposed upon me by others, or (b) imposed upon me by myself, but become a hinderance rather than a help as life's situations change, but the stated "goals" does not. Goals turn into obligations, obligations become burders, and too many burdens lead to stagnation. (... and hate leads to suffering.)

I think it is for that reason that I become leery of trying to set "goals", especially of the long term variety.

How to reconcile all this with the direction in life, or lack thereof? I dunno right now, which is why I didn't want to jump the gun of making a pack of new New Year's resolutions which would fossilize within 6 months. Maybe having dynimacally updated goals is a good way to go. I think doing that well requires a good knowledge of oneself -- a high degree of honesty.

On that note, I'm gonna plop again. The Mighty Melatonin summons the gods of sleep with its magical power. Best not to keep them waiting, now that they have arrived as invited.