Inspired by this post by Sacha Chua.

In my wild dreams of success, I am a student - but a peculiar sort of one. I am a student of making things - that is to say, I'm actively hacking stuff and being openly reflective about it - and my teachers are the students I am teaching, or whom I have taught, or the students of my students (or somewhere down that line).

Studying and making and hacking are things I would like to return to, and things I will come back to cyclically throughout my life. I want to build the kind of world I'd like to learn in and then be able to enjoy it - sort of the equivalent of, say, a college president retiring and then enrolling as a freshman. Maybe not quite so drastic or clear, but a similar idea.

I've found that I can't just relax into making (worksforme is not sufficient) until the conditions under which everyone is able to hack - because I want to hack with other people! - are satisfactory, and so I became a teacher and a system-shaper so that someday, maybe, I could rest. For instance, I am looking forward to being a campus ambassador - and so I've been talking a bit to Ryan Rix about building that program so it will kick ass by the time I arrive, and I can relax and settle into being Just Like Any Other Newbie. And I so look forward to being Just Another Volunteer on the Marketing team headed by Robyn Bergeron next release cycle.

So it's important for me to learn to be a catalyst, rather than carrying things on my shoulders ad infinitum, and it's important for me to learn how to pass the raptor/bus test, let go, move on. As long as the world isn't the one I want to live in, I will keep on changing it - until other people start to do the job. And then I will bloody well relax and enjoy it.

I'll worry about learning how to relax when that time comes. ;-)