Things I Learned In 2012 – Patrick Rhone

As this year draws to a close, here is a once again not nearly complete list of the the things I learned this past year:

That a pony is not another name for a foal but, in fact, a small breed of horse.
Abundance may seem more than enough, but it is only so when not doing enough with the abundance.
What dropping a ten pound weight from six feet high on one’s foot feels like and the effects there of. (Hurts like hell, two broken toes.)
That is is completely possible to make a (so far, very) modest income from writing. (Please buy my books because every little bit helps.)
I read way more books than I thought I did.
That it was mostly non-fiction. (OK, I kind of knew this.)
That I want to read more fiction in the future.
TV is broken.
“Carrying coals to Newcastle” is a phrase that means to do something pointless and superfluous.
How to set ACL permissions in Mac OS X Lion Server. (Wish I wouldn’t have had to learn this because it is a pain in the ass.)
How easy it is to become numb to things that cause pain in our lives if the pain is not painful enough to address.
Convenience is a double edged sword because inconvenience can be such a very good motivator.
That true communities have sidewalks.
What a Stand Up Meeting is and it’s potential value outside of programing culture.
One of the best things you can say about a pen is that it is “pocketable”. Because a pen you can easily pocket is a pen you are likely to take with you every day and a pen that you take with you is a pen you will use.
A good pen is a promise to an empty page.
That, my best writing is done with pen and paper and that I plan on doing so more and more.
Paper is always on.
Paper is never passive.
That I really need to listen to the push back my inner voice gives me when it comes to committing to things outside of my comfort zone and skill set. (Some exceptions apply. Your actual milage may y. Please drink responsibly.)
“You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.” â€” Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit
Why waste your CPU on something you are not committed to do?
You gotta love the land.
John James Audubon, despite portraits you may have seen depicting him otherwise, was half-Black.
The quietest place on earth is just a few miles away.
The Re-captcha Project is used to help digitize books, newspapers, and radio shows. This makes me less annoyed that I often cant make out any of the words it wants me to type.
The biggest tech story of the year is always you.
That it is, in fact, possible to love my wife even more than I ever thought I could even as I think I could not possibly love her more.
Bonus prediction: That 2013 will be the year of opt-out. That disconnection will become hipster cool. More and more people will be replacing smart phones with dumb ones, digital with analog, social with solitude, sharing with journaling, etc.