Forest Dreamery

This blip represents how I've felt working today.

I had a dose of a new reality last week. Over this last year my ability to read small print, especially in poor light, has rapidly diminished. I'm finding myself holding things further and further away in order to bring the print into focus. I've been lucky enough to have enjoyed perfect eyesight all my life but a few days ago, while trying to read the directions on a food packet, I reached a critical point where I simply couldn't read the words. The focal distance was simply too far away for me to be able to resolve the small print. Shit. I really do need glasses.

But worse still, this is analogous to where I find myself with software development right now. Beyond a certain level of complexity I cannot bring the whole problem into focus - or, perhaps more accurately, hold it all in memory. I used to be able to just 'see' the solution. It was much the same when I was at school with maths problems. I didn't have to think too hard for I could just 'see' the answers. That doesn't happen any more, at least when the problem is reasonably difficult. I stare at the screen, and it just doesn't come into my head like it used to.

My colleague at work said, "welcome to the world that the rest of us live in!", which was nice, and in a way quite comforting, the only trouble being that I've never developed the tools to help with this. I've never done diagrams or flowcharts. I've always kept everything in my head. At least, in compensation, other more intuitive skills seem to be flourishing. I'm not altogether unhappy that the programming part of brain is shrivelling up! It seems to be making room for more interesting stuff to break through. Can other people in their fifties relate to this?

I should let you know that the phoneworld idea has picked up a bit of momentum. I've posted something on the forum here. Thanks for all the enthusiastic feedback.

Finally, after a frustrating day yesterday, a late decision was made to take the evening off to go watch Django. It was an awesome piece of film-making. We did all literally leave the cinema in awe of the whole production. Tarantino is just so damn good that you can't help but forgive his excesses and even his terrible self-indulgent cameos. It's the way he signs his films, and they are breathtakingly good. We were blown away! Provided you can stand the sight of blood (a lot of it), go watch it.