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Great Expectations
September 27th, 2026
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  I notice I have been prey to great expectations again.
Plans go in my mind, some idea comes forth, and I think:
Great! I will do this incredible thing!

  Of course I somehow conclude that the thing itself will be great,
that I will push it further than anybody and that the world will
be reasonably changed for the better once my idea gets from my
mind to the material world.

It goes like this:
1. A fair bit of daydreaming: I have to consider the idea so it fills me
   with delight, without being too precise.
2. Procrastinating a lot.
3. Try to get something done. In general, it looks like everything
   at the inception stage: unfinished at best, shitty at worst.
4. Get a new idea, return to step 1.

Meanwhile, a lot of unfinished ideas come to this half-life.

  I read a strip from cartoonist Aude Picault today:
It goes a little bit like this:

---
[A young woman, phoning 
- Mom, I can't believe it, work is getting most of my time
  and energy. I can't bear it.
- [...]
- What? You mean it is so for everybody else?
  HOW COMES NOBODY HAS DONE ANYTHING TO SOLVE THIS YET!?  [1]
---
  The necessity to secure an income plays a part in this.
Work is tiring. Generally must be done asap, without being
really urgent. We get the general idea that some numbers
somewhere need to go up.

  Sometimes there is something as urgent as, in my opinion, 
pointless. Administrative work, office, going back and forth
without a clear purpose. David Graeber made a paper about what
he called `bullshit jobs', and then he had to write a thick
book about all the guys who mailed him telling him that
this resonated deep within them.

  I am lucky that I don't consider my job pointless at all.
But the energy and the time it takes are still very much real.
And as daydreaming and free flow of ideas is not really a part
of it. Ideas must come and go and get to fruition on my so-called
free time. Thus, more free time = better ideas?
It is worth considering. Greeks had this idea that leisure
(schole) was an essential part of development of developing
mental, physical, and political activity.
They did obtain this free-time by enslaving others, though.
Today we have lots of robots and computers that can do menial
work and John M. Keynes used to predict that the human economy
should only need a few hours of work per week, mostly to satisfy
our human need to feel useful. So why so much work has to be done
only to feel useless?

  And again, what were those great expectations in the first place?
That sometimes we should just relax and let go. We can't rush them!

# REFERENCES
[1] Aude Picault: Moi je (2004).