Transparency. It’s an issue. Or at least, I’ve made it an issue enough to write on it. And it’s not just transparency, but the record-keeping that is associated with staying transparent.

And while writing and rewriting this post, I realized that I had once again fooled myself into thinking that talking about myself was actually useful.

It’s simple really: One extreme is to be as painfully as open as possible. The other is to shut up, and bottle it all up within. Does this really need another blog post?

It’s taken me a while to have this level of understanding of myself, and I’m sure I’ll keep learning as I go along. But seriously, these kinds of posts need to end.

Quick, To The Point!

Be open and honest, but don’t place importance on achieving openness for the sake of it, all the while sacrificing valuable time and effort. That should be reserved for creating something awesome instead.

Applications On Projects

I stand firmly on the view that ideas are almost worthless compared to implementation (this is a statement that’s a broad generalization… definitely much more to be said on this topic). But ideas are so easy to come by, and talking and writing is really easy. Or at least, I tend to talk and write about them at an elementary level, and so it may just seem easy.

This is also where transparency becomes a roadblock. To stay transparent, I try to write and talk about my ideas. From there, I just keep throwing new ideas, mixing and matching feature sets across projects.

Staying transparent has become a project all on its own. An idea without implementation.

And this must end.

Where Am I?

I don’t know how I got here. I think it’s about time I got fed up with my own lack of focus.

Here we go yet again.

I’m not 100% certain when the pain in my eyes started, but I’m fairly certain it started after I went out on my own with HanMeta. Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours and hours on end probably doesn’t make the pain go away.

I’d be lying if I said that my eyes weren’t getting better, but they’re not getting better fast enough. Here’s a list of things I’ve been doing to sidestep this roadblock, to make sure I don’t go blind while working on my projects.

• Exercise: Just do it. Seriously, there are benefits aplenty by exercising. Running is good, running outside is even better, since you get all that fresh air to your eyeballs… if you don’t have leg pains like I do.

• 20/20/20 rule: I’ve seen this all over the place, but I use it more as a set of loose guidelines to follow. Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away from 20 seconds. I’m doing it right now as I’m typing this sentence. Also, as you do it, you could also stretch your wrists for double the fun. Tools like AntiRSI really help in this endeavor. (I think Caffeine.app messes around with AntiRSI.app… I should look into this.)

• Blink: Just blink. More.

• Decrease of Media Consumption via the Screen: This includes movies, “TV” shows that I watch via the Internet, and video games. I’ve gone back to being lo-fi, visiting libraries and reading some of my books I haven’t finished.

• IM? Twitter? Email? Feeds?: Almost anything that requires me to read anything on my computer has begun to annoy my eyes. To tell you the truth, this physical roadblock might provoke me to finish up a project faster than if I had no physical pain at all.

• Ergonomics: Blah blah blah. Glare? Get rid of it. Small text, especially on a 17″ screen with 1920×1200 resolution? Make it bigger or get a larger external display. Lots of information general Ergonomics on the Interwebs to read, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

This entire list boils down to me trying to be more effective with my time on the computer. Heck, more effective with my time on this planet. From time to time, all the mystery pain I’ve been having puts things into perspective; that so much of my time has gone to waste and that there is only so little time left.

So, seriously, Eyes. Suck it up, and be awesome instead.