"Install: clamps to hold drain pipe to the floor." I assume we've all had projects like this one, a seemingly unpretentious project that shouldn't take much effort to complete. But unfortunately, I'm not too fond of these kinds of projects because my past track record with them has been less than ideal.
The person who installed the pipe for the furnace suggested I clamp it to the floor, so it didn't get kicked and broken. The line ran about 3 feet from the base of our furnace to the drain. The "high efficiency" furnace created extra moisture, and the pipe was a way to channel the water to the drain instead of allowing a stream to run across the floor.
The project remained on my to-do list for probably two years; by the time I got around to doing the "simple" task, it took two hours and two trips to the local hardware store to buy more "stuff" to complete. Here's my dilemma; I could not let go of this action. I couldn't seem to ignore it. I kept trying to "renegotiate" the task by placing other things ahead of it, but even with a conscious choice to do other things, it grated on me. Finally, in my journal, I made a special note on the completed project to be very careful of what tasks I commit to, given the dilemma described above.
I'm experiencing the same puzzle with a white paper pdf file I downloaded years ago entitled "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think" by Lion Kimbro (2003). The author has since published the white paper into a book by the same name, and according to Goodreads, there are four people currently reading the book and 199 others who have listed it as "want to read." The book presently carries a star rating of 3.76 out of 5.
My problem is the white paper is the worst-written, most poorly edited piece of $%#@ white paper I have ever attempted to read. I had tried to read it and eventually gave up. According to my journal entry on January 14, 2014, after I had wanted to read it a second time, I noted: "I now remember why I never finished this pdf before. It is extremely poorly written and challenging to glean any useful information from." So on November 13, 2021, I would put in bold headings, "Don't try to reread this!" I don't know why I get drawn back to this junk text. I'm sure it is the title. Who wouldn't want to have a nice map of our thoughts?
Michael Nielsen, author and one of seven to review the book on Goodreads, gave it a five-star rating. He says that it is "A terrific, very unusual book. I read (most of it)" then, as a side note, he says, "Warning: it doesn't fit the model of what a "good" book should be. It's uneven, badly edited, wandering... and so on."
I start dozens of books every month from my Amazon Unlimited membership, and at the first hint of anything but a good read, I trash the book and don't look back. Part of me wants to dismantle the pdf and recombine the broken pieces into a working model of the whole. However, rewriting would be time-consuming without understanding the author's original intent. Frankly, a total waste of time as other complete systems like Obsidian, TheBrain, Roam, and Notion all exist digitally to capture and link our thoughts on the fly.
Unlike my pipe project, I'm going to $hitcan this pdf before it bubbles up again for my consideration. The last thing I want is another ten years to go by with me still trying to make sense of the unsensible.
Written November 12, 2022