The world is really simple – and that makes everything complicated. Lots and lots – billions – of simple pieces – very simple pieces – all moving around and interacting at the same time. It’s very complicated.
I hate playing chess. I used to think I was smart, but then I realized how simple chess was, and how bad I was at it. I want chess to be something that smart people can just be good at – but it’s a skill, like everything else – so I’m not good at it, which means I’m not a smart as I thought I was, because I can’t just pick it up, look at it, and figure it out. So I hate it.
Everything is like that. The things that were made by smart people, for smart people, usually end up getting mastered – and taken over – by stupid people who want the benefits of playing the same closed games we smart people invented in order to keep them out. And then it isn’t fun anymore, because before long, the stupid people get to be smarter than the smart people, and we have to find something else to do.
It’s like the rubiks cube. I tried to figure out how to figure out how to solve it – without algorithms. I don’t want to memorize a set of steps, I want to see how smart I am. But after I solved it a few times, I started to realize that there are certain sets of steps you can follow that work every time… and then it got boring, because all I was doing, at that point, was memorizing a set of steps.
Everything eventually becomes a science – which means that the more magic you practice, the less magic there is in the universe. At some point, all the magic in the universe will just become science and then life won’t be worth living anymore.
If you really want to be special you have to invent something. A religion, a martial art, a bit of software. A book. To be the first one – but, even then, it’s not guaranteed. Even if you’re the first one, someone else with no talent can come along and sell your thing and take all the credit.
You also have to be careful not to fall into the trap of mass producing other people’s inventions for money – artists end up drawing the same pictures, again and again – software developers inevitably find themselves “specializing” in writing and rewriting the same application, again and again, in different languages and for different companies. At some point, you stop inventing altogether and become a full time salesman – someone with no talent selling other people’s ideas and taking all the credit. But if it puts food on my children’s plates…. ?
Here’s another thing that happens when you are a creator. An idea gets into your head, and it won’t go away. Most of the time you can drink another cup of coffee, or hit the weights again, or watch another YouTube video, or go for another walk, or smoke another cigarette, or… and then, after all that, if the idea still won’t go away, so that you can sit down and get busy doing whatever it is you’re really supposed to be doing, for whoever is paying you to do it, what then?
If I have to write one more paragraph about the election, or one more RESTful CRUD service… draw one more couple holding hands in front of a sunset on the beach… or stand in this horse stance for one more minute…
I had a melt-down last night. They’ve been happening more and more frequently.
Maybe I should stop drinking so much coffee.