On Seeking Order in Chaos
From my notebook:
Brains are pattern recognition machines.
I seek structure, sometimes meta-structure.
I try to structure how I structure things.
Projects, stories and adventures often only become apparent when they are in the past.
They evolve naturally, organically. Starting a project can result in something completely different. Is there a structure in that?
I am trying to find structure again.
Life is chaotic, and that's okay.
I had this on my mind for quite some time. I'm trying to cope with chaos in my life. I like chaos, and I like turning chaos into order. But often, that does not work and I get frustrated.
Projects - no matter if programming, writing, planning an event or woodworking - are inherently chaotic. There is no structure in the concept of a "project". I want to think of a project as the sum of threads of actions towards a goal, and life is the sum of every project you ever started. I try to find a way to capture and grasp these "threads" - like commits on different branches of a code repository. On projects other than programming, this utterly fails.
I have to keep telling myself to be fine with the fact that life does not follow a structure. My personal takeaway is learning to recognize when I am seeking structure as a response to anxiety vs. when I'm doing it because it's actually useful.
Am I alone with this? Does this resonate with anyone out there? I'd love to hear from you.