There’s a saying about marriage that you should find a spouse with your eyes wide open and stay with a spouse with your eyes half shut.¹ I’ve found this to be helpful advice about more than just marriage; when I buy a new computer I spend months reading reviews and write ups on the all the components involved and scouring the world for the best prices. Once I buy my components I all but block those sites on my browser; I don’t want to know that a brand new video card came out the same day my suddenly obsolete one arrives at my door. I just want to be happy with what I bought.

And, in an odd way it’s turning out to be true about writing Painless Vim. There are two books and a few websites that I used quite a bit while I was starting to learn vim, they are somehow on my “okay” list. But any site or book I haven’t read yet is now the enemy, because I’m afraid they’re all better than the book I’m writing and I’ll have to die now. There are (at least) two other vim books already on Leanpub.com; I can’t look at them too directly lest I discover the only thing my book has that the don’t is a whimsical cover.

And, of course, what does it matter? If other books are better that’s fine; I can hope that there are some people out there who will get what they need out of my little book. So I’m keeping my head in the sand a little bit. Some day I’ll be done writing Painless Vim and I’ll be able to read other people’s vim books.

There’s no real point here; just a little note about how my mind seems to work when I’m mid-book like this.

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