Back around 2005 I started an on-line masters program with a well-known and highly promoted online university. In one of my classes I had written what I thought was a well-done treatise¹ in order to fulfill some course requirement. I did not score well on that paper. When I asked why, I was told that it did not meet the page requirements.

I pointed out to the instructor that as a communications major in business school I was taught that you should write succinctly in order to clearly communicate your thoughts without burdening the reader with undue verbiage. I was taught not to fill your writing with fluff – say what you need to say then get out.

The ultimate goal of all education is, or at least ought to be, to teach the individual how to learn. In my mind, what they learn is less important than that they learn how to learn. why? Because if you know how to learn, there is no limit to what you can learn!

Not only is there no limit to what you can learn, but you will have the skills to teach yourself what you need to know. Part of that process, at least in my mind, is learning how to question what you see or hear, to challenge your own assumptions, and to have a desire to seek out answers to the questions you have.

As I’ve noted in several prior posts I self-host a fair number of services on my local devices. Now, there are any number of reasons why someone would choose to self host. For some people it is the challenge of learning new skills. For others it’s about having a sense of control over your data. For others, still, it’s about ensuring the future availability of services as it’s well known that many services fall to the wayside overtime and nothing is more frustrating than to become accustomed to using a particular service only to have it disappear one day.

Periodically I pause and wonder at the changes that have taken place over the last 30 years and how much the internet has infiltrated our lives. And, like many others, I wonder whether the ubiquity of the internet is a good or bad thing.

I started my own internet journey in the late 1980’s with a dial up connection to Prodigy. Over time I moved through AOL, then Compuserve, then to a local provider, Homnet, in Warner Robins, GA. It would be several more years before I was connected full-time.

As the owner of an ADHD brain, one of the biggest challenges I face is balancing the need to build routines in order to be productive with the need for new and novel mental stimulation. You see, I know that I need to build routines. I also know that maintaining routines in the face of constant distraction is hard. And, to be honest, I find that conflict somewhat interesting.

How it All Began

Back well before I realized that I may have ADHD and before I sought out validation of that suspicion I recognized that about once a year, usually around February, I would become highly dissatisfied with my work environment and end up changing jobs. I initially attributed this to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD, of course, is the seasonal depression that supposedly comes from the lack of sunshine during the winter months. Given that during January and February of each year I usually went to work in the dark, worked inside a building with no natural light, and then drove home in the dark, that certainly seemed a reasonable conclusion. That conclusion was further supported when I took a job that had me driving around town all day, going in and out of buildings, to service computers. During that time I didn’t seem to be affected by the depression in the same way.