The Point is to Try

What's the point?

I don't really know. I don't think anybody really does. I do think that anyone who claims they know what the point of all this is is lying. I also think that one of the wonderful things about being a human, about being alive and aware, is that you can decide to make practically anything the point for you.

Quite a brave and bold take, I know.

In the spirit of choosing your own point though, I thought I'd share my own personal one. For me, the point is to try. Let me explain.

Without going into too many details, my fiancee and I have had a rough go of it the last couple years. I think most people have, and I think we've been fortunate to avoid the worst outcomes, but it hasn't been easy. Family medical emergencies, losing loved ones, and moving across the country takes its toll. And that's without throwing in multiple (sometimes multiple per month) trips across the country for work and friends and family. And also planning and paying for our own wedding (that's actually been a lot of fun, but I digress).

When you're already burnt-out and exhausted from work and prior travels and running half-marathons, getting the news that a family member had a heart attack makes everything you thought you were worried about seem pointless. Absurd, even.

Getting back home after finding out everything was okay? That's a different thing entirely.

See, I stay up later than my fiancee does. I usually wake up earlier too (it's a problem, I know). Alone, I wonder about a lot of the things that take up my time, that occupy my thoughts. One of them, coincidentally quite relevant here, is the absurdity of the very act of making this blog. I have no illusions about my own personal reach, I don't really want to write a blog for acclaim or, even worse branding. I do it because I find it fun. It's an exercise in effort, in doing something that's sometimes hard.

There's something valuable in a best effort. In struggling and ultimately failing to achieve something. Struggling and achieving is better, sure, but it's the failures that teach us the most.

I don't really consider myself the best at anything. My strongest talent, truthfully, is my ability to fail. If you fail fast, you learn fast, and if you've failed you've tried. And even if something was ultimately fruitless, in the end no effort is wasted. Call me a try-hard if you will, but to me the point is to try.

It's something I touched on a bit in Coffee, Cooking, and the Elitism of Not Caring. The idea that trying hard is not a bad thing. I could honestly make a whole blog post about this idea of a "try-hard". Maybe I will.

But I'll probably write about Vim first. I use Vim now, btw.