64: File Corrupting Butterfly

Dear Abyss is ready to launch, so I’m making new words. It’s another column.

If you insist on proceeding, though, if you demand you be allowed to weave yourself a chrysalis and transform into a kernel developer like a panic-prone memory-dumping file-corrupting butterfly, immediately separate your dreams from your goals. A goal is something actionable that is completely within your control to achieve. Accomplishing a dream requires other people intervene on your behalf. Going out for a dinner date with that attractive person? Totally a dream. Asking that attractive person out for a dinner date, and when they remind you that you are inherently unloveable leaving them the heck alone instead of stalking them like the creepy hero of a so-called “romance?” An absolutely achievable goal!

You cannot control other people. Work on goals. Never on dreams.

I babble a whole bunch about dreams versus goals in Domesticate Your Badgers. And seriously, if they turn you down leave them the hell alone.