Bill Wear

Welcome to the personal website of Bill Wear.

I am a pragmatic existentialist, trying to live out a simple idea: practical action creates personal meaning.

This quest started fifty-four years ago, when I read On Being a Real Person at age 9. From there, it evolved through:

Walden
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Tao Te Ching
Frankl
Nietzche
Zen classics
Quaker writers
John Muir
Some forgotten, transient hippie philosophers

It was locked into place through my lifelong practice of Unix, Linux, and Emacs. Local or remote, printed or handheld, I have daily depended on such tools to help me take practical action and create personal meaning.

Along the way, observing myself, some principles have emerged as clear habits for me:

Start small, build incrementally.
Say exactly what you mean.
Connect with others and build real relationships.
Divide and conquer to tackle larger goals.
Keep it simple.
Do one thing well at a time.
Be who you are.
Build for strength, not just speed.
Speak clearly, listen carefully, pay close attention.
Under-promise and over-deliver.
Don’t interfere with other people’s choices unless they affect you.
Try lots of new things, safely.
Use what you have.
Use leverage, but not people.
Get it up and running quickly, then tune it.
Distrust all claims for the one true way.
Think ahead, but don’t worship your plans.
Think as big as you can as often as you can, but understand that dreams are a vector, not a goal.

More recently, I’ve encoded this philosophy into a personal motto, “simple, solid, sincere,” and a statement of belief, “practical action creates personal meaning.”

This site is about one person’s evolving understanding of themselves, and an ongoing exploration of what can be done if one commits to a clear purpose.