Not much for "New Years" resolutions, but, as I age I seem to be more prone to reflection. Looking back over the last year with an eye towards the coming year(s) i'm struggling to reconcile my imagination with reality.
Why is it that the grand plans I imagine are such a struggle to implement. A surprising theme stands out, Perfection! We live in a time when so much information is available it would seem very straight forward to find the best way to do things. Rather we've created an environment of excess information that can paralyze. A Google search of SR Steering Head Angles results in about 163,000 results! You have to become good at search words, Boolean logic, etc
In my life and it's associated projects it's become clear that I want everything to be perfect (it's my imagination so lets understand that we're talking about my idea of perfect). It's clear to me that not everything has to be done to the same level of finish but I have struggled with the slippery slope of compromise. Once you've allowed yourself to make something that's "OK", how OK does it need to be? This grey area is the challenge for me. Add to this that i'm not perfect (I know, no one is perfect) and even when I'm trying for A1, top shelf, perfection, things go wrong. What is the sum of compromise and error?
Bart Simpson summed it up so well;
Teacher "Why are you so upset to get an F on the test, you always get F's?)
Bart "I never tried to get anything more than an F before, It wasn't a surprise to get an F if you never study and screw around all the time. This time I really tried! If I tried and still got an F then I really am an idiot."
I guess it's like gambling as well, you play, you loose, you tell yourself that just on the odds alone you have to be close to winning. The more time I spend on something the more invested I am that it's perfect. If I spent a weekend restoring a bike for the road I wouldn't be surprised that it looked like crap. But if you've got 6 months and hundreds of hours into it, then it'd better be fantastic.
There is so much that I want to create in my lifetime, yet i'm surrounded with dozens of very cool projects that I struggle to get traction on because It's not clear how to complete them perfectly. My work as a contractor suffers as well since I never want to do a project that is good enough. I want everything to be perfect, even if it's a set of stairs for a porch. The sporadic posts to this blog are a victim as well. I don't post because I don't feel like I can quickly make a perfect post, and I don't have the time to spend half a day writing/researching the content.
A friend commented that with all the snow on the ground I should have the cars in the garage but the garage is full of pending or partially completed projects. Alas, there is no room at the inn for our daily drivers. I've for the most part stopped acquiring, or tearing into new projects so that's a start.
I think I'm getting a couple of things out of writing this post.
- Maybe I should stop looking at all of these projects as one time affairs. The snow blower restoration may be an ongoing project to get just the way I want it. Same with the SR or the 109, etc etc.
- I think I need to remember that I have pretty good instincts. Before the internet, and with much less $$$ I was pretty happy with my projects. All the extra information out there muddles my instincts.
- Realizing something I've imagined is the real goal. Being creative and making it a reality is the fun part. It's why I'm not into just buying stuff off the shelf. It'd certainly be cheaper in most cases but it's always a compromise.
- The most important piece is probably just to keep working. A journey of a thousand miles not only starts with a single step, but is a series of steps each as important as the first or last. 15 minutes spent on something will inevitably get me closer to completion than watching 15 minutes of the cooking channel.
Don't know if anyone reads any of this but if you stumble across it and have any sage comments let me know.
Good luck with your projects!
