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May 21, 2002

I've never been known to engage in a lot of crafts. Some people have a good time making all sorts of things. As I was growing up I remember my mother being involved in an ever-changing number of craft-related hobbies. Just off the top of my head I remember macrame, punch-pictures, pottery, and cake-baking all at one time. My father, on the other hand, engaged in endless home improvement projects which, I think, performed the same function. He was always planting things in the yard, building fences, painting furniture, putting in tile, putting up wallpaper and so on. These sorts of projects seem to provide people with a sense of accomplishment and an outlet for creativity. I admit, there is something attractive about finishing a project for which you are not getting paid, which you chose yourself, and which took some amount of skill. Growing up watching my parents enjoy themselves that way, I've come to understand and even expect that people like to engage in all sorts of craft or home improvement endeavors.

However, I don't like doing anything of the sort myself. Yard work is a chore. Home improvement is nice, but I'd rather pay someone else to remodel my kitchen, put in the lighting, and rewire my house for Ethernet than spend numerous Saturdays planning and wondering whether I was going to mess the whole thing up and have to start over. I'd rather leave it to the professionals. Most other crafts such as pottery or punch-pictures I find dull and repetitive. Isn't this why they invented robots and assembly lines? So people wouldn't have to do this?

This made me wonder why I didn't feel the need to express my creativity. Why I didn't feel the urge to set and accomplish goals and work on projects at my own pace. After much introspection, I discovered that I do both those things, but in a much different way than my parents. My lack of a role model for my own personal mode of fulfilling these desires simply lead me to believe that I didn't fulfill them at all. But of course I do. Everyone probably does. Instead of home improvement, I tend to engage in a lot of self-improvement. I'm always interested in teaching myself new skills and challenging myself with new problems. A good example of this is Emma, from Jane Austen's novel of the same name. Emma was always trying to improve herself, making reading lists and practicing the arts. While the details of what areas I choose to improve are different from Emma's, the principle is nevertheless the same. Lately, this is an area where I have been far too negligent. Leaving school has lead me to stagnate in many areas. This is one reason I'm so looking forward to getting back in August.

I find that I'm also constantly engaging my creativity through my programming work, both what I get paid for and what I do on my own. Programming is a constant outlet of creativity. It demands constant innovation and problem solving. Lately most of that has been directed towards my home programming project (and toward video games, many of which require the same sort of problem solving) since most of the work problems have been solved. Things are currently a little more exciting there than they have been, however. As for goal setting, I do that all the time. And most the time I accomplish them. I've completed all the goals that I published on this page back in March, and it does feel good to have finished those projects. On that note, I'm looking for some more projects. Here are a few I've been thinking about getting into:


I think that's enough to keep me busy for a while. These are just some ideas I've had, not actually projects I want to start anytime soon. (Except the budgeting one, that's sort of necessary).