Usually I write posts because "hey I have this idea and want to show off and maybe people will like me". People don't like me (the way I want to be liked?), so I'm not getting anything out of the posts, and I constantly feel low-key annoyed.
The thing I'm trying to do with these sketches is "seeing clearly". I have a bunch of problems. I want to write what I think about them.
(Partly I also want to see whether people will find my writings useful if I don't put in any effort and just write much more than I usually do. But the theme is still "seeing clearly".)
Focusing is a technique for seeing clearly.
Unrelatedly, Malcolm Ocean advocates for seeing clearly:
The reason I want to see clearly is that I feel tired of not seeing clearly. I keep doing things and being only vaguely aware of what I'm doing. I keep saying things and I don't have any examples for them. Here, I did it just a sentence ago.
(Okay, here's an example: I am only vaguely aware of how I behave around people. I don't see myself from aside. I notice things sometimes, and forget them immediately.)
Not knowing what I want, or like, is not-seeing-clearly. And it's also annoying.
I start playing piano and my back starts hurting. I don't know why. Feels like this is not-seeing-clearly too.
Not making any plans is not-seeing-clearly. I want something, but I don't know how to get it and I am not trying to figure out how to get it. This happens all the time. Planning is "figuring out how to get what you want" and I never do it.
I think the solution is to start noticing when I don't see something clearly, and develop a distaste for it. Like a distaste for junk food.
Feels similar to ADHD stuff. Noticing how much I switch between apps, how much I try to tune out, etc, and developing a distaste for that. I'm not sure it's been working, though.
I think it's possible to keep not-seeing-things-clearly forever. Some kind of eternal therapy that never ends, because it's doing things without putting in the effort. I think I have spent a lot of time not putting in the effort. So, the other solution is to put in more effort. See things clearly a hundred times and I'll start doing it more and more.
I did see things clearly once. Well, two times. I wrote two very popular posts about implementation details of two Haskell libraries — a lens tutorial and an aeson tutorial. I went ahead and actually understood exactly how the libraries work. People liked those posts a lot, and I used my own understanding at work for years afterwards.
I often skip the "seeing clearly" stage at work, trying to proceed with half-assed understanding. I don't clearly see how CSS works, for instance, or why Postgres queries are fast or slow. I don't even understand the syntax of SQL and I can still use it. I was proud of it, but now I feel like I don't like it and want to see things clearly.
I think "doing things well" is similar to "seeing clearly". You can read the manual, or half-ass things. You can google how many eggs you need for a cake, or think "eh six is probably fine". Etc. I think it's related, and this is also a thing I've started doing more.