Fort Awesome

Or is that a decifit. It depends on whether you’re looking at the intention, or the actual output. Recently my creative gland has been secreting its special endocrines into my bloodstream, giving me the urge to make things. This could be building a shelf, drawing a picture, making an animation, filming a movie, writing a computer game, painting a shelf, drawing a movie, filming a picture… any of those. All of them, in fact. That’s part of my problem: I want to do all of these things so much that I can never settle on getting started with just one.

Now you might say, “come on Nick, you’re a scientist. Get back in your labcoat and titrate this acid solution.” You are partly correct, except I forgot anything to do with Chemistry years ago. While I may be a coding fiend, I am also other kinds of fiend too. I’m a fiend of all trades.

I want to be disgustingly good at drawing. I’m currently alright at doodling, but nothing epic. These people who can whip out their sketchbook and 3B pencil and knock up a fantastically detailed drawing of a dragon grabbing burning peasants and smoking them like cigars (or whatever)… they’re amazing. I want to be that good, and I realise that this takes years of practice. So why haven’t I been practising? I don’t know. I do a bit and then move on to something else. So while I know I could get really good at something if I put in the time, I never do, and thus, nothing is created, and the world supply of commas runs out at the end of this sentence.

Making a computer game is within my abilities now, but it takes a lot of time and it was disheartening when I tried recently and came across a show-stopping bug with the engine I was using. I might try again sometime with a different engine.

The other endeavours - movie making, animation, even plain old writing - are all things that could benefit from a little practice. I don’t mean to be arrogant but I think I could make something really good if I stuck to it, and occassionally I have. Enough people have informed me that I’m an intelligent individual, so I’m quite clever, whoop de doo. That just makes me harder to please mentally (oh, the trials of being a white middle-class male. I’m such a dick!). I really want to make something that people see and think, “that’s cool”. I want to make a name for myself. Being “Nick who hasn’t made anything” or even “Nick who has a job but nothing in particular to show for it” doesn’t make me feel good. I don’t want to just get through life without rolling 3 doubles and going to jail. I want to leave stuff behind that I made. “Remember that guy, the one who made this thing?” “No.” “Ahhh, but look at it. It’s all… dusty. Brilliant.”

So my point is that I need to set myself some goals, and things to do every day. This is probably an ideal time of my life for it, as I am freelancing from home and have spare time to draw and play. Note to self: playing Zelda on the Gamecube doesn’t count.