30 may 2022
So, $work has been on a documentation kick lately, and of course being the nerdy and geeky person that I am, I've been working a bit today around some internal documentation for our home. Stuff around how to access things on the network, what the network even is, what the retrocomputing and radio projects lying around the house actually are.
The feels get a bit heavy here. CW: death of a loved one.
When my Grandfather passed away, I became the person in charge of clearing out "the basement" -- all of the tech and belongings that he has accumulated in a lifetime. It was a difficult and emotionally heavy task. There was a wide variety of stuff there that spoke of his curiosity about the world. And he spent his life down in that basement, and my Grandmother spent her life upstairs, and it became a physical barrier between the two.
This morning, I've been thinking about how much easier it would have been for me for there to be documentation around everything and what it was about/for - hence my own internal documentation project. It struck me that this kind of documentation, while it's useful for myself and tracking down obscure commands and software packages, it's really about making sure that my loved ones can also have access to the same things and, if need be, carry on without me. It's an act of caring, really.
I also recognize that I don't ever want to be in the situation of being squirreled away in a basement or a cave when pursuing my interests. There's some parallel play happening in our house right now even - my spouse is playing a game on the Switch, our kiddo is on the couch playing on his iPad, and I'm sitting on the stairs typing out my feels. Occasionally, one of us pops our head up and shares what they are doing. I would much rather have that then see us all hide away into our own little parts of the world.