Projects

What adds a bit of spice to the life of a middle aged man? No, this has nothing to do with sex (grin). What I’m thinking about here is upcoming projects.

Do you like working on your car? Are you looking forward to replacing the carpet in your den with some hardwood you got cheap at Home Depot? Are you ready to add that new deck on the back of your house?

Well, I’m a geek, and none of those things appeal to me, but the concept of “projects” applies to all of us. For me it’s the thought of, perhaps, ordering the components of a PC and assembling them. Or installing a wireless weather station, and have it’s data automatically routed to a website on the internet. (I’ve done both of those.)

When we think of an upcoming project with delight, we are really reminiscing about the “flow” we experienced on past projects. What is flow? Flow is nothing short of the key to happiness. Flow, a term invented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is the state you are in when you are so absorbed in an activity that time passes instantly. You look at the clock and can’t believe it’s 4 hours later. Csikszentmihalyi wrote several books with the express purpose of teaching you how to “get into” a flow state. If you are new to this concept take a look at his book “Finding Flow.”

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my new project. As you know, I’m heavy into west coast swing dancing. I’m not saying I’m any good, but it’s a hobby that both Heather and I have been infatuated with for a couple of years now. I remember just telling her, on the drive home Thursday, how much I enjoyed the nights dancing, and she agreed completely. Dancing reminds me of when I used to play golf all the time as a teenager. Improvements come slowly. The key factor is how much you practice.

So what’s my new project? What I want to do is put a searchable database of dance patterns on a web site. Right now I keep notes of the patterns I learn. My thinking is, if I am forced to go through my notes and systematize them, I will be better able to remember them while I’m dancing, and possibly, help other people out at the same time. This is strictly a hobby. No aspirations of making money here. (As an aside, in my experience, the best things happen when you pursue your hobbies and forgot about making money.)

So for example, when you are dancing, on the first step you might find yourself in closed position, or open position (database field #1). If you are in open, you might find yourself having a left to right handhold (most common), but there are also right to right, right to left and left to left (database field #2). On the first step of the dance you can step back, step diagonal right or step diagonal left (database field #3). Do you see how the patterns can be dissected? Perfect for a searchable database. And to my knowledge has never been done.

I also want it to have video clips and I want it to be a wiki, so other people can add to it. Fun stuff! I got the domain last week: westcoastpatterns.com. Now I just need to finish this darn real estate web site I’ve been working on for the past 6 months :).