Fluffbuff

Before and during my grad school days, I used to read a lot. Then, the strain of keeping up a three-year full-time graduate program while working full-time, commuting, sustaining a relationship, keeping a cat and a menagerie of fish and corals in my reef tank alive, and generally trying to have a life, took its toll. My reading habits took a drastic turn from actual reading to browsing, leafing through, consulting and plain just looking at pictures. I haven't read a book cover to cover in about five years.

Two days ago something happened to break the dry spell — I am not sure what — and I started reading again. I am now at page 130 of Dreaming in Code with two other books already lined up: The Wisdom of Crowds and Maps of The Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. Dreaming in Code, albeit disheartening in its almost fatalistic assessment, is an easy and entertaining read on why it's so hard to build software. Reading it is reacquanting me with concepts and acronyms I had pushed to the back of my mind, and showing me new ones. I feel the old enthusiasm for geek pursuits coming back.

Despite having completed all the class requirements, I never finished my thesis project or got my Masters in Media Studies. The whole experience left me with a bitter taste, a lack of sufferance for the politics and bullshit of academia, and a bad case of information fatigue that caused my regression to picture books. Oh well… it's all in the past now, and I never regretted getting out without the piece of paper.

This weekend will be all about relaxing, some house chores and hopefully finishing the yellow scarf which only needs a little bit of grafting at the border and then blocking. Since I finished the border, I've been knitting the other scarf, the one with short rows. It's growing slowly and I may not have enough yarn after all, but It's relaxed knitting as I memorized the pattern.