Bulldozer00's Blog

I’ve always admired Linus Torvalds. Thus, I found this slashdot.org article, “Linus Torvalds Answers Your Questions“, fascinating. Particularly, this Q & A struck a chord in me:

Q: You must of been burned out on Linux kernel development multiple-times over by now… how do you deal with it?

Linus: Oh, I really enjoy what I do. And I actually enjoy arguing too, and while I may swear a lot and appear like a grumpy angry old man at times, I am also pretty good at just letting things go. So I can be very passionate about some things, but at the same time I don’t tend to really hold on to some particular issue for too long, and I think that helps avoid burn-out.

Obsessing about things is important, and things really do matter, but if you can’t let go of them, you’ll end up crazy.

I’ve found that when I can’t let go of something that “shouldn’t be like it is“, the world suddenly stops. I get stuck; immobilized by a stagnating cesspool of circular thoughts and wondering if I’ll ever get unstuck.

The key for me to getting unstuck and moving forward again is to realize that I can’t control or fix everything to “my” liking. As hard as it is to accept, the world doesn’t exist to accommodate “ME“. Thus, when I can remember it (which is a challenge in itself), my favorite prayer is:

BD00, please grant the “other” BD00 the serenity to accept the things he cannot change,
The courage to change the things he can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

How about you? Do you ever get stuck? What gets you unstuck?