Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this thing called “t/cmisha” for almost 20 years now, from 2004 all the way to 2023. Let me tell you, it’s been a wild ride. I started this whole thing way back when I was just a young buck, fresh out of college and full of big ideas. I had this notion that I could track all sorts of stuff, you know, just for kicks, and see what came of it. I didn’t even know what I was doing, honestly, but I dove in headfirst.
At first, I was just jotting things down in notebooks, scribbling like a madman. I tried to capture everything from what I ate to how many hours I slept. I even tried to record all my moods. It was a mess, a total free-for-all. Then, I started typing things up, moving all that data into spreadsheets. Man, those early spreadsheets were something else. Just a bunch of random numbers and notes that probably only made sense to me. I think I spent a good chunk of 2005 just trying to figure out how to use the damn formula functions. I spent more time on those things than I’d like to admit.
Then, around 2008, I started to get a little more organized. I built some basic databases, nothing fancy, just something to store the data in a way that wasn’t a complete disaster. I was starting to see patterns, little things here and there. It was like finding gold, I tell ya. Seeing those patterns made me want to keep going, to see what else I could find. I was hooked, like an addict, but for data. I just had to know more.
Over the next few years, I learned a bit of coding, enough to write some simple scripts. I felt like a god. These scripts helped me pull data out of those databases, run some basic analysis. It was still pretty rough, but it was progress. I remember one time I accidentally deleted a whole year’s worth of data. Yeah, that was a fun day. I spent the next week trying to recover it from backups, which were also a mess. Lesson learned, let me tell you.
By the time 2015 rolled around, I had a pretty decent system going. I was collecting data more consistently, storing it in a more organized way, and even doing some basic analysis that actually made sense. I even started making some charts and graphs. They weren’t pretty, but they were mine. And they were starting to tell a story, a story about me, about my life, about all the little things that made up my days. The things that would normally slip away unnoticed, I had them captured.
Fast forward to 2023, and I’m still at it. The system is way more sophisticated now, of course. I upgraded my databases, learned some new coding tricks, and even started using some fancy data visualization tools. But at its heart, it’s still the same thing I started back in 2004. It’s a way for me to track my life, to understand myself a little better, to see the patterns and the trends that shape who I am. I can see how different parts of my life affect each other. It’s like having a superpower, but a really nerdy one.
So, what have I learned?
- Start small. Don’t try to do everything at once.
- Be persistent. It takes time to see results. It took me years to see anything interesting.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. I’ve made a ton of them, and I’ve learned from every single one. Losing that year of data was painful, but it taught me the importance of good backups.
- Keep learning. There’s always something new to learn, some new tool to try. I’m still learning new things every day, and that’s part of the fun.
It’s been a long journey, this whole “t/cmisha” thing. It’s been frustrating at times, and rewarding at others. But it’s been mine, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s a part of me now, woven into the fabric of my life. And who knows, maybe it’ll even outlive me. Maybe my grandkids will find these old databases someday and wonder what the hell their grandpa was up to. I kind of like that idea.
