Reflections on Thinking
Tags: telescope, opensource, osd700
Published: 2022-02-05 06:22:10

[Telescope](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope) version 2.6 just released!

Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to land a single PR.

This week was rough. Last week, I wrote about the dependency graph program I was thinking for Telescope. The key word here is *thinking*.

## Overthinking is Terrible

Some people say that thinking before you speak is something you should on your day to day. Well, what happens if you take that to the extreme? Let's say that you end up on a endless spiral of thought, to the detriment of your productivity.

I was preparing the dependency graph service for Telescope during the week, trying my best to land it for release 2.6, but I noticed it was already too late. While in the Triage meeting on Thursday, Dave mentioned something along the lines of "drive and communication is key on an open-source project." These words stuck with me during the day.

I thought about them for a while. I felt disappointed that I couldn't land any code for the release, despite everybody else landing a ton of bug fixes, features, documentation, etc. I noticed everybody moving forward and I just stood there, thinking. I was falling behind.

I was feeling miserable. It was a feeling worse than impostor's syndrome. I didn't know what to do.

## Facing the fear

While I told myself that I didn't know what to do, it was more of a "I don't want to face the truth."

The question I was trying to answer was "why did I take so long for a single PR that I couldn't even submit?" It wasn't because I couldn't program it, and it wasn't because of the review process. It wasn't because the requirements were unclear, nothing of that sort. The **real** reason was in front of me, but I didn't want to see it.

I lacked communication.

Ever since I can remember, I have struggled to share my thoughts. I don't want to seem as annoying or dumb or ignorant or anything of that sort. I want to provide something useful to the conversation, so I *think* about my words, to the detriment of communicating with others.

## Communication is key

I realised the meaning of Dave's words: "drive and communication is key on an open-source project." In reality, I feel that communication is key on a lot more things in life, but to keep it on topic, I will leave it as it is.

If I had communicated more, I would have ended the PR much sooner. I would have received review feedback earlier, and thus could improve it earlier, but I didn't. It's not because I wanted to impress everyone, but it was more out of fear of not being able to show something of worth.

However, after that terrible experience, I did learn something. While it was not necessarily related to programming skills or anything of the sort, I consider this lesson more valuable than learning another programming language.

## Next steps

While the starting point of the dependency graph or as I should call it, the `dependency-discovery` service, is here, there is a [lot more to go](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/issues/2827). [A lot](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/issues/2828). I am not kidding, [A LOT](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/issues/2830). Also, there are other [areas sprouting](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/issues/2837) as well that I got interested on.

I am really excited for this. However, this kind of excitement is somewhat different than the one I had last week. I am not really sure what it is exactly, but thanks to the lessons learned I have gained a whole lot of motivation to do an even more amazing release 2.7!

I don't want to say exactly what I am going to do, as I want my actions to speak for myself. I will keep you updated next week. Thank you.