The Warp Factor Metaphor

 Ya know, I made the title of a blogpost "Increase speed to Warp Factor 2" a little while ago as a joke, but I was thinking about that metaphor today and I think it really works.  Because you want to be able to take yourself to Warp 9 and be able to hold it for a while, but that speed isn't sustainable long term, it's too hard on the engines.  And there are times where you're going to have to slow down to Impulse and coast, but if you want to get anywhere, Warp will get you there much faster.

So my goal is to get myself to a comfortable cruising speed of Warp 5, with the options of going higher or lower, depending on whether I'm encountering a Borg Cube or a Class M planet.

Also, in the book I'm reading I came upon a fantastic section that fits with the concept of mediocrity:

"Failure is easy to measure.  Failure is an event.

    Harder to measure is insignificance.  A nonevent.  Insignificance creeps in, it dawns, it gives you hope, then delusion, then one day, when you're not looking, it's there, at your front door, on your desk, in the mirror, or not, not any of that, it's the lack of all that.  One day, when you are looking, it's not looking, no one is.  You lie in your bed and realize that if you don't get out of bed and into the world today, it is very likely no one will even notice."

From How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu.

Reading snippets like this are exactly why I put reading on my personal requirements.  I used to read a lot, when I was a teenager and full of passion about being exposed to the myriad ideas of the world.  Then I kind of got bogged down by life and work and stopped reading and stopped being exposed to pieces of wisdom and narratives besides the ones I would see in movies or on TV.  But those are not the same.

I'm really happy to get back to reading.