With the development of this new web space, blog, etc, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to what I should do with this space and who am I. The question “Who am I?” is one that could drive a person insane if contemplated long enough. And so, I try to think about it in a sort of out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye kind of way.
My profile descriptions on many sites reads as follows:
By day, I am a web application programmer/designer and a spinner/knitter/writer/video game player by night.
This is all well and good, and perhaps true. However, it only captures the here and now. Much of me is more like my blog subtitle “ambitions, dreams and nonsense”. I think our dreams and ambitions define us as much as or jobs and hobbies.
Lately I have been struggling with my ambitions; trying to keep them under control, trying to not let them interfere with my ability to do my job. Real life has a way of becoming quite unpleasant if ignored for too long. Ideas and concepts keep creeping into my everyday thought processes. Sometimes I wish I were doing something else, somewhere else, with other people. Mostly, I just wish I had the power to overcome my fears and make a change in my life.
In real life I am indeed a web programmer. I am responsible for developing and maintaining many sites and web applications both internally and externally used by my company. It can be exciting, boring and sometimes both exciting and boring at once. Web work can be fun and writing programs that help others do their job is satisfying. But really, in the end it’s just 1′s and 0′s.
A large part of why I love knitting, spinning, and all crafts in general is the creation of something physical. I like the end product as much as the process. If the power goes out, I still have a sweater and a pair of socks; something that cannot be claimed for web work.
Besides the physical object, crafting also creates something else in me; something so satisfying, it distracts me from my day to day duties. That something is the desire to create my own original designs. True, I get a little bit of that from programming. Designing new sites, dreaming up new layouts, drawing some new images. However, those things are intangible. I cannot touch or feel them. They can be pretty and appealing, but again, when the power goes out, they do not keep me warm.
How to quench this thirst? I have started, slowly, trying to put some ideas onto paper, sending some designs out into the world to be judged, and trying not to hold my breath for a reply.
In my heart, I am a designer.
[...] preface this posting with a disclaimer of sorts: I am calling myself a designer because that is what I am striving to be. However, you will find that my design resume is rather short. I have one design self [...]