Did you ever feel that you were meant to fly but somehow you gave up your wings? Doesn’t happen to me often, but just once in a while. Just came across me this morning.
I was looking up some information that I needed in order to make a program work. I am a computer programmer, have been for thirty years, and often have new areas that I must learn. I searched all of my books, and then jumped to the internet to find info. While bouncing around I ended up at W3c. This is the web site put up by the organization that really sets the standard for the World Wide Web. One of the pages is on Tim Berners-Lee, basically the founder of the WWW. Back in 1990 he came up with the first standards and a program to handle what became html pages. While reading I realized that I was working on the Arpanet back before he even became involved in computer communications. I saw the results of his stuff flow by, and they didn’t mean too much to me when they came up. Kind of like Gary Kildall at Digital Research, the company that told IBM they didn’t want to be bothered with the new PC, go talk to Bill Gates, but not as big a name or as good a story.
I read the article on how he thought of things, and designed things, and ended up doing something about it. I couldn’t help but compare this to what I do, sitting here trying to figure out if I need a comma or semicolon between phrases, put a 9 at the bottom of that letter instead of a 7, make that stuff upper case, left justify that, etc., etc., etc. I feel like I would like to jump out and do something, but am too tied down to the job, the paycheck, the things I’m asked to do every day. My mind doesn’t usually pick out the little pieces floating through, saying to myself “Joe, do something about that ...”. And then I don’t. Wonder where I would be if I did pick up on something and do it. But there are a lot of people that do try and don’t get anywhere, more so that those that try and make it. But if you don’t try you don’t usually make something of it.
So, here I sit, just thinking instead of doing. Ever feel like that?
No comments:
Post a Comment