Thank you for this forwardslash, it's nice to get a glimpse behind the man that has done so much for the place so many of us use, visit and hang out at often.
The Questions:
1. What is happiness?
2. Why did you join the Hubski team?
3. What is your message?
Shout-outs so this doesn't get lost in the holiday hullabaloo.
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What is happiness. Uh? Good question. To me, happiness is probably a day without any obligations. Take one of my earliest, happiest memories. It was on a field trip in Kindergarden or grade 1 when we went to a dinosaur museum. It was one of the first field trips that we were able to go to without having any parental supervision. So we got to go see dinosaurs which was awesome. By myself, I got to buy a McDonald's Happy Meal. Actually, I got a Big Mac. First time I was able to buy a Big Mac myself. There was a lot of freedom. It was very probably what happiness would mean to me. Just free from stress, obligation. Just going throughout your day taking it all in, taking it a moment at a time. Not having to worry about 'is this money that I'm spending on a Big Mac worth it, should I be spending it on something else?' I didn't care about that. I got to buy a Batman and Robin mug when the Batman and Robin movies were out. It was good. Why did I join the Hubski team? I joined because Hubski was probably the first community in which I stuck around for longer than a few months. I had gone through a lot of communities when I was much younger around the time before Halo 2 came out. I was involved in, hung out with the Halo community. Some community forums such as SubNova. I think that's what the community was. And I never stuck around. I would hang out, I would meet people, but I would never stick around. And Hubski was the first community which I stuck around and wanted to stick around. And so I wanted to be a part of that. Making the community which was so great that I stuck around better. There was also, it was the first web app that I had ever worked on, like complete web app and not some boiler plate thing that you bring up just for fun. So it was interesting working in a new language. And at the time I didn't have anything like that. Even I did some refactoring for the Hubski Enhancement Suite and that was one of the major sparks for me falling in love with programming. Being able to build something that people saw used. I could see immediately that people liked. So it was quite intoxicating. What is your message? My message. I don't know what my message is. I'm not, I'm very low key. I'm not a guy who would give a big message. I guess my message would probably be, I guess my favorite philosopher is Kierkegaard. From him, but from one of his writings. There was a writing of a story of a guy who is walking home from work with a friend and he is going home to his family. And he is bragging about how much he's looking forward to when he comes home and this meal that his wife is going to make and how great it is and is just gushing about how wonderful it's going to be when he gets home. And when he gets home his wife hasn't prepared a meal, and hasn't the time to do it. And he with the same amount of joy is thankful for what she did give him. And I always thought that was a great little story about living your life with joy and just hoping for the best and loving everything that's brought your way, even if it's not what you expect, which can be hard. As my wife and I like to call it, you can have a hangover expectation. Or an expectation hangover, which is when you're expecting something and it doesn't go your way and it can really let you down. But in the best case you would approach the new circumstances with the same joy that you approached the joy you approached the expectation/anticipation. It's not an easy thing to do. I always struggle with it. But I like looking towards that as a way of living.
The dinosaur museum memory is awesome. I like the concept of an 'expectation hangover'. My wife says that I am an incorrigible optimist, and I think it might have to do with the fact that I recover from expectation hangovers very quickly. Expectation is a significant part of the experience, after all.
At first I thought that his example of McDonald's was an odd one to use regarding what happiness is. But then I put myself in the shoes of first grade me and I knew exactly what he meant. Not only did he get to buy his lunch himself but he DIDN'T get a kids meal, he got what the big kids got. Why? Because autonomy! I am really enjoying putting these together. Everybody is so different and has such different takes on the questions, it's pretty neat.