n plus one

There's many reasons for the title of this blog.  

The first comes from # 12 of the rules of cycling by Velominati, in which n + 1 is the number of bikes you must own. The reason I am writing this blog is because I'm also currently reading Boy Racer, by Mark Cavendish - it is an inspiring book as I can relate well to his tantrums and mistakes and hopefully I also learn from mine.  The one thing I have lacked however in my career is passion, and I'm finding it slowly, but its fucking hard in the corporate world to even get a job that you want because HR people often have no clue as to what the job is about.

Another reason for calling my blog n + 1 is that I have always loved mathematics, and mathematical induction is one of the things I recall from high school maths (mathematical induction basically uses n plus 1 to prove that something is true by proving it is true for n and n + 1 and therefore true for all positive integers.) I remember my high school teacher saying "if you don't understand this now, you'll never understand it, so just learn how to do it."  There was pressure for me to understand it, because I was apparently the smartest kid at school, or so I was told, but I didn't get it, so I just had to pretend - I understood what to do, just not why.  Six years later in a university random elective on cryptography I encountered induction again. But this time I got it. I understood. Mrs Monahan you were wrong, but that's ok. I have learned now, that everyone has different opinions and I shouldn't believe it when people tell me I can't do something.

And finally, this blog kind of follows on from the previous two reasons in that n+1 is something that we don't have, but want strive for and want to achieve. But are we really any better off by achieving it, or is it better just to cruise along without any ambition. I'm not sure. If the same thing is true for n as is true for n + 1, why do we keep striving for me. I guess it's because I'm very goal orientated and need a focus and a direction. If I don't have goals, then I am disillusioned and lost.    This blog is going to help me recall the goals I've achieved and keep track of those I currently have.