What did I do with all that time?

Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

Sometimes the hardest thing about work is getting started.

There are days where I wake up buzzing with ideas and dying to code. There are days when I wake up with nothing.

One thing I’ve realized about getting older is that you lose the time to fuck around.

I remember in eighth grade my English teacher, Ms. Barbely, telling us “you think I’m assigning a lot of work? Wait until you get to high school!”

I thought she was crazy. I thought I did plenty of work.

Then I went to high school and I realized she was right.

In high school, I remember teachers saying “We’re not giving you that much to do, just wait until you get to college, you’ll think this was a breeze”

And then I went to college—and more importantly realized I had to pay for college—and started working 3 nights a week in a restaurant.

What did I do with all that time I had in high school?

Then I decided if I was ever going to get a job as an engineer I needed to get some experience. So I took an internship at a small company 3 days during the week, took a full course load on the other 2 days, and then went to work 3 nights at the restaurant.

What did I do with all that time when I had just one job?

Then I graduated and got a full-time job.

Actually, that change meant I could drop the night job and really did open up a bunch of free time.

Then I moved in with my girlfriend… What did I do with all that time when I lived by myself?

Then I got engaged and had a wedding to plan… What did I do with all that time?

Then we had our wonderful son… What did I do with all that time?

Then we had our amazing daughter and “free time” really slipped away.

You get the idea. Life gets more complicated. I look back at each of those stages now and marvel at all the time I had.²

The time we have to build things is precious. I don’t want waste it waiting around until “I’m feeling it.”