I think a lot about what’s right. Not necessarily what is moral, just, factual, or ethical – though frequently those as well – but what fits, what makes sense, what’s appropriate, what’s useful. I think as much about what I should want as about what I do want, and more about what I must do than what I might do. Everything is a web of dependencies, and if I do the wrong thing it all might come crashing down – or so it feels.
I don’t know if, until recently, I recognized this pattern or identified it as a potential problem – but now that I can see it I see it repeating everywhere. So much of my talent lies in taking an idea, worrying at it and about it, dissecting it, observing it, understanding where it connects to other ideas – all because, if I fail to do so, I will be cursed with a fragment, a failed and incorrect idea. I obsess until I can describe it, how it connects, what that means, what it implies. Some people find this trait of mine very tedious. At times I am one of them. It’s a quixotic and asymptotic quest, anyway: Nothing is ever quite complete, quite correct. There are always gaps, and the better I get at it the bigger those gaps seem.
Now that I’m trying to actually finish projects, the true toll of this quirk is coming into focus. I keep redoing functional work because it’s not correct, tackling over-scoped tools and components because I want to do things the right way, and – sure, sometimes the right way is great, but there’s a reason the army does things the army way instead of the right way. Sometimes the right way is the wrong choice. Correctness is very seductive, though – “if I do things the right way,” I say to myself, “then it will be more reliable, more useful – heck, maybe so useful I could sell it on its own!” To an extent, it can be hard to argue against that: all of these things are at least partially true. Where is that extent, though? If I do this every time I build a tool or a component, I’ll never be able to finish anything, eternally chasing rabbits down holes, quixotic, asymptotic.
There’s a trick to it that I’m trying to learn – to figure out how to aim for the just good enough version to start, and then refine it piecemeal only when I see it again and it no longer seems good enough. I always feel like doing this will mean a lot of wasted effort, since redoing it will always require more raw creation – that is, re-programming a tool will require writing more code than if I did it right the first time, or re-drawing a piece of art will require spilling more digital ink than creating a single satisfactory piece. Not all work is equal, though: If you use a version of a tool that’s somewhere between just good enough and not quite satisfactory for a while, you have a much better idea of what needs to be done to make it actually good – and have a largely functional basis to build that idea off of.
Still, it’s so difficult to walk away from an idea that isn’t yet what it could be. What is the role of an artist if not to realize an idea to the fullest extent that can be imagined? If there’s a future where I have a chance to reevaluate, though, then there’s also a future where I have the opportunity to rethink, rebuild, and make things better. Every step forward is a loss of balance, and every loss of balance is a leap of faith.