Are you there, can you hear me, does our connection look sane?
Pings are the fundamental, most basic information you need to verify that you can do everything else. They aren't aggressive or malicious.
Can a packet be sent from my machine to yours, wherever in the world it is?
I think of timers as pings to your future self.
You have an expectation for the state of the world when the timer goes off, and your future self will confirm or deny it with certain information. The state will not be exact, but it should be reasonable.
Time is a noisy network for information to travel over, but you should still make it to the end with basic information. Pings are meant to be cheap. It's not a trigger for reflecting on the last however long of your life, just a quick yes/no.
If you don't remember what you should have remembered, the connection has broken down.
If you've been unable to do the thing you were going to do, something is wrong with the connection.
If you're roughly in the right spot doing what you meant to do, carry on. The connection is still live and information can be transferred to your next future self.
At this point the metaphor breaks down a bit since the information never gets returned and varies more than a standard ping, but I digress.
I'm editing this 10 minutes before I have to leave. I've set a timer for 5 minutes from now. It's not a deadline, just a check.
If that timer goes off and I'm not looking at a completed post, there's a problem. My connection to my past self who thought this was doable broke down. Start debugging and looking for alternatives.
Even if I have literally no constraints, I'll throw on a timer for a couple hours. When it goes off, it's a check that I'm doing alright and whatever I'm doing seems to have lined up with the time it took. If I'm watching paint dry for three hours, that's fine as long as I'm aware it took three hours.
What are you expecting of your future self?
- Rew
Nightly Notes
This does not articulate the idea I want it to articulate well, and that's frustrating. I don't know how to explain the logic I use for simple actions. It just doesn't seem that complicated to me, but I know other people aren't doing it.
But, I don't think more time on this post will help. Out it goes.
Maybe I'll come back to it, maybe I won't. Haven't decided yet.
Anyway, it's the end of the month.
I'm a bit surprised I made it.
I suppose this is a weird ping, coming from myself at the end of January. Message received, connection established. I was right, this month was easier. It's still been rough.
Wrote less than last month, even accounting for fewer days. I'll check on that later.
More next month.
Onwards.
- Rew