found_drama

Combing through my Amazon wishlist this evening while looking for something else, I came to a particular realization. Well, not that particular…

I stumbled across my entry for Moock’s Actionscript MX definitive guide and it dawned on me that I don’t really work with Flash. Not in any sense that seems worth writing home about. A year ago, when I was pitching myself to every web development and/or design firm in the state of Vermont, I was highlighting my Flash work and my Actionscript know-how. Any a year ago, I genuinely believed that.

This is not to imply that I do not know Flash or Actionscript.

Almost to the contrary, this is to say that a year ago was a very different brainspace for me. A year ago, I was the The Guy That Could Do It All. The proverbial jack-of-all-trades that knew his way around pretty much every web-related technology and could hold his own in a pound-for-pound grudge match to the bit. I *knew* this stuff.

Now it’s more like “on a scale of 1 to 10 I rate in at about a 3 or a 4.” Something along those lines. I know enough to poke my way through what some Flash pro has done. Enough to say stuff like, “I think we need to reference the variables differently in the datafile.” I can get down enough of the nomenclature. And at least I’m not bashful when it comes to saying: “That’s over my head.”

As I scroll through that wishlist looking for the item in question, I notice other titles that seemed of the utmost relevance a year ago. the PHP Cookbook, the MySQL Cookbook, the CSS pocket reference, and all manner of assorted design-related books.

Somehow, I figured out that you can’t do it all. Even if you want to. But you sure can try. And maybe in the process you’ll pick up just enough to figure out the things that matter to you. What rings your bell. What fuels your fire.

I found I like coding like motherfucker. I found I like knowledge systems. I found I wasn’t paying attention to the things that really strike me. But I have the feeling that once I get immersed in all that, I’ll want to be illustrating/designing again. Or worse yet, maybe I’ll want to go back to school.

1. To finally get my team at work adequately staffed so that I can come off of the phone rotation and start focusing on my new “managerial” role. In other words, to do my damn job and stop being the most interrupted man in the universe. (See also, “Blown Buffer”)
2. To have sufficient mental faculties to remember to take lots of pictures of my new house during the inspection. Start my plan to take it from “potentially cool” to “truly kick-ass”.
3. Catch up on my damn sleep.
4. Finish reading Perdido Street Station (so damn close!)
5. Locate lost time; use it wisely.
6. Take a vacation somewhere in the world where beer is revered. Or at least where it is brewed with much reverence. A weekend in Portland, ME will do until then.
7. Convince Wacom engineers to stop wasting their time and just invent a damn pen that tracks anywhere. Processorts are sophisticated enough to render it out on their own…