What the hell is Cursacaik?

I often find myself thinking of cool things I could do to improve myself and be generally interesting. In most cases I end up not doing them or just doing a little bit. I justify my behaviour by claiming not to have enough time or that the circumstances are wrong. In my more self-reflective and honest moments, I admit to myself that it’s mostly because I prefer sitting around not doing much.

I thought I would write a list of the things that I think about doing sometimes, so you can all see what a fascinating, action-packed type of guy I would be. If I could be bothered.

• Be more hardcore about my kung fu. There’s this great little line in the book Snow Crash about how every guy under the age of 25 thinks he could still go and spend 10 years in a Shaolin Temple and become a ninja master (or something like that). I still have dreams like that, though slightly more modest. The practical side is doing 2-4 hours of training a day and actually making some progress.
• Learn Django and build a research web site. I’ve actually done a bit of this. Though I’ve been doing bits of it for about a year now and there’s nothing to see so I wouldn’t hold your breath. The plan sometimes includes getting a lot more familiar with presentation side web programming like CSS and AJAX.
• Get super fit. I could go to the gym a lot now that it’s part of my student fees. In fact I do attend some of the “free” fitness classes, but if I went every day for a year then  imagine how fit I would be. And I could start a crossfit training program, or I could start practicing parkour (though maybe when there isn’t snow on the ground).
• Learn french. I’ve started to learn french a number of times. Most recently, I completed a number of classes at the Alliance Francais in Sydney just before Callum was born. I’m told Busuu is good, but of course learning anything requires time.
• Learn a musical instrument. I have a cheap plastic recorder and we’re about to inherit a piano. We’ll see how I go with taking time to practice.
• Complete a PhD with impact. In these early days, I have hope for both real-world and academic impact. (As a side note, I find it amusing that “real-world” is actually the accepted and understood term for the opposite of academic.)
• Lots of other things that are fleeting ideas. Maybe I’ll make more of an effort to document them now that I’ve thought about this a little more explicitly now.

A typical problem that I find is that I come up with an OK idea that is manageable, but then, instead of just going ahead with it, I think too much and start adding to it. The plan quickly becomes this monstrous thing that’s completely impossible and gets cancelled because it’s too much. For example, a plan to practice kung fu forms every second morning turns into a glorious plan to work out every part of my body for 3 hours every day.

The tone of this post is a little depressing. Let me tell you though that I usually hold high hopes of at least partial success in all of these things.

Ironically, I actually started writing this post about six months ago. I do feel a little better that I came back to it and finished it eventually.