I am a compulsive tinkerer. Must nudge and tweak. Must take it apart to see what’s underneath. Forcing myself to conform and focus enough to make forward progress is a challenge. Little things can take me forever. Washing dishes makes me wonder about how soap bubbles work. And dust – ever wonder how the connecting parts of dust bunnies look under a microscope? I have.
Seriously, it’s not that crazy between my ears all the time.
Being me does have its moments. 
One really good and bad thing about being me is that I have to feel like I can re-invent the wheel. I need to feel authentic about a thing in order to feel peace about doing it. Following directions is never enough. Making it work is almost not as important as understanding how it might work.
Understanding – wow – understanding is a high like chocolate or the concept of childbirth or a really good sunrise in springtime. I can be like a vampire for what-makes-it-tick. I can sit with someone who is an expert at something about which I know nothing and, if they’re good at talking to a noob, absolutely inhale their wonder and logic around whatever it is they do. I can go on for hours, years even, as long as their mind is lively and in love with what they’re doing.
In between breaths, I’ll go to my “home” place and doodle with my own stuff. Doodling can take many forms. When I was baking professionally, a good dinner party conversation with an international investment banker (about banking) led me to re-assess what flavors I wanted to lay along side a dessert built on almond paste laced pound cake — there was something about a balance of relationships that needed to be communicated through cake. Now that I am involved with the web I see relationships in terms of links and usability. Like so much of the rest of life, the details are boring as dirt, but the workings are as wonderful as the great outdoors. There is poetry everywhere, laying along side the box models and elseifs… and here I am flirting with 1am looking at what I want to do with it.
At some point I need to make myself get linear and apply the poetry to productivity. It’s a balance thing. I want and need another kind of self-directed, public project with which to balance the soul searching.
Here it comes: split focus.
I think I’m going to blog my way through the WordPress Codex. Really learning the Codex will be good for me, and I might make a good resource for others. I like the shared learning experience atmosphere of Cre8asite Forums. Bringing that here feels like a good identity statement. Besides, I have this personality thing going on: I am first and foremost an artist, and perfectionism is my script kiddie.
What I mean by that last sentence will have to wait for another day. I will push the publish button before I get too far past 1am.