New is beautiful (day 92)

I get a special little thrill when I think about learning something new.  It's a similar thrill to opening up a novel already in progress.  The moment of anticipation of something unexpected and engaging.  It's different but similar to the thrill of creating something which feels exciting and risky all at once.  Learning something new feels hopeful and young.

I know a lot of people don't have this experience but I liked school so much when I was a kid that I would miss it in the summer.  I would ask for extra homework.  I would read books from the grades above me.  I particularly loved looking at algebra books and later calculus books so I could figure them out.   I loved things that had answers and were self-consistent.  Playing with coloured shapes and grouping them together was fun too.  Anything that was well framed and logical.

Looking back now, it doesn't seem crazy that I ended up in computing science.  Though at the time it wasn't such an easy decision.  The hard sciences like Chemistry, Biology, and Physics were much more respected.   And computing science (I'm not even using capital letters), in my mind, was for play...not serious business.  I was so serious.

I still love cracking open a computing science book though I would never immerse myself back in the field as I was.  I love the frame of a system that is logical and responsive.  It's a refuge from the open-ended and much more arbitrary art world (I don't say this pejoratively...I mean arbitrary in the same way that the law is arbitrary...complex systems built over time and highly contingent).

This weekend I'll learn something new about GLSL.  I look forward to it.

A song for this post.