Like many nerds Before me, I spent a large part of my life searching for the perfect thing computer system. I wanted a single tool that would let me write prose or programs, could search every email, tweet or document in a few keystrokes and would work on all my devices. I longed to climb to the top of the legendary Augment Mountain, to achieve the enlightenment of a properly tuned personal computer. Where software industry Given notifications, clicks and small dings, messages jump up and down my screen like a dog begging for a treat, I want gentle text. Looking for it, I adjusted. I have configured.
The purpose of the configuration is to make one thing work with another — to make the to-do list work with an email client, such as one calendar to work with another. It is an interdisciplinary study. Configuration can be as complex as programming or as simple as ticking a box. Everyone talks about it, but it’s not taken as seriously, because it’s not very profitable. And unfortunately the configuration is indistinguishable from the delay. A little is okay, but too much is embarrassing.
I’ve spent almost three decades configuring my text editor, accumulating about 20 dotfiles to make up an acronym or gibberish that matches another word. (For me: i3wm + emacs + org-mode + notmuch + tmux, linked together by ssh + git + Syncthing + Tailscale.) I start with a path, but then there are some interceptors — some errors I didn’t get I didn’t understand, some error pages I just didn’t have time to deal with — and I’m giving up.
One big problem I have is where to put my stuff. I have tried different databases, directory structures, private sites, cloud drives, and desktop search engines. The final key was turning nearly everything in my life into email. All my calendar entries, essay drafts, tweets—I’ve written programs that turn them into gigs and email contracts. Emails are horrible, messy, messy, corrupt data, but they are understood by everyone everywhere. You can impregnate them with attachments. You can tag them. You can add any amount of metadata to them and synchronize them with the server. They suck, but they work. There is no higher praise.
It took years to put all these emails in the right place, tag them, filter them like that. Little by little, I was able to see more clearly the shape of my own data. And when I do this, the software gets better and the computer gets faster. Not only that, others also started sharing of them config file on GitHub.
Then, on a cold day – January 31, 2022 – something strange happened. I’m at home, writing a little glue function to make my emails searchable from anywhere inside my text editor. I evaluated that little program and ran it. It worked. Somewhere in my brain, I feel a difference click. I have finished. No longer configurable, but configured. The world has conspired to give me what I want. I got up from my computer, filled with the emotions of a European classical-composer, and went for a walk. Is this happiness? Freedom? Or will I find myself back tomorrow, with a whole new set of requirements?
