Embracing constant change

So here's a first post on a new blogging platform, Hashnode, which so far is a pretty decent SaaS blogging offering. It's a change, something very different from coding my own back-end CMS and deployment system for running my blog. For me this is normal, change that is, there is always something new to learn, something new to try. I like that about the world, never being without the new. But I guess it's important to consider the alternatives, what else is there and why is it different.

The obvious alternative to constant change is being static. When things don't change it is easier to get really good at the same old same old. Being easier is tempting, there is a comfort in regularity that doesn't exist in constant change. There is predictability in lack of change, it gives a sense of greater knowledge and control when things are well known. You can probably achieve a much higher level of skill mastery if you do the same thing over and over again.

But I think that the sense of control and greater knowledge may be false in some ways true in others. When you do the same thing over and over again, you may become adept at avoiding the common and uncommon mistakes. Such micro-skill sets are useful in the face of what you know. But you'll never know if whole classes of potential failures are avoidable, entire micro-skill sets are learned that might not even be necessary at all. Comfort in mastery of the known can become a liability when perfecting the knowledge of what isn't even necessary to know.

Is comfort worth such a trade off? I don't know if there is one answer for that, but for me it is "no".

So I'll move on from one platform I built by hand, to one that is managed and built by others. I'll find other new things to learn and new challenges to overcome, I'll be uncomfortable in my niavete for a while as I learn. I'll probably never be a master that does one thing better than anyone else, and that's ok. This is just a blogging platform, but that's not all that I'm talking about here. Life in general for me is about change and learning, I enjoy it, but I do wonder sometimes if I might have enjoyed the road of comfort and narrow mastery more.