Makers/DIY’rs are a troubled sort. They understand how things work. They know what it takes to put things together. When they look at something, their first words tend not to be, how useful that is or how beautiful that is. It’s always, “I can make that!” Often they can make it for way cheaper, but not usually. Sometimes they can make it better, but not usually. For those who live with a Maker, it’s a life of patience and biting of tongue. – The couple goes out looking for a dining room table… The family eat Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners on cardboard boxes. Valentine’s day the couple sits down together at a medieval king’s banquet table able to hold the whole fatted pig, spit and all because there are andirons built into the table. The Maker is beaming over the baby. The spouse… not so much… the Queen-Ann china cabinet in the corner is traumatized.
Engineers are perfectionist. It’s not necessarily a good thing. They can always find fault with their baby. They can always find ways to improve their baby. If left to their own devices, they’d never birth it into the world. The wording is, “I need to change just one more thing.” That’s why companies need marketers, salesman and executives. These people’s sole job is to determine when the baby is needed, when the engineer is asleep and to make the snatch. The difference between good companies and bad companies… these people have learned to speak engineerese. They have successfully learned how to decipher the 90:10 rule. It takes 10% of the time to get 90% done and 90% of the time to get the last 10%. They stick a fork in it better than bad companies.
Is procrastination a mental illness? Oh! Hell yes. The idea of playing around doing the things you want to do, waiting till the last moment to start. Tearing your hair out, kicking the cat. How do you know if you have this affliction? Are you late to work on Mondays? Nah! That doesn’t mean you have it… you just have a life and enjoyed too much of it over the weekend. In college, did you skip all the classes and cram the night before the test… just because the instructor said, “The grade comes from the tests and the homework is for your benefit?” You have it pretty bad. Do you know that the post office serves coffee and donuts, drive-through style out in the parking lot at 12 midnight on April 15th? Yeah! Someone needs to bring the strait jacket for you bud.
Now, what do all these things have to do with ANYTHING? Where’s the cattle-prod?
April 1st I woke up in the middle of the night. A thought didn’t hit me. It literally lifted me from the bed and teleported me into the office with continuous mumblings coming out of my mouth… “I can make that”… “I can make that”… after three hours, at 4am… the words changed “I can still make that”.
I’m on a mission. (Blue’s Brothers style) Sixteen hour days, sometime twenty are common. Some of it is because of the urgency, some because of the Maker. But most… the mind is tackling the next problem and won’t let me rest. Researching, designing, analyzing, building 3D modeling, printing, accounting for non-linear heat shrinkage, re-evaluating, re-designing, re-analyzing… overcoming lack of knowledge in foreign fields. Early May and I still hadn’t seen life in the project. I felt good. I could just feel it was around the corner. Tests kept pointing to eventual success. EVEN to me, it was obvious, I was in that last 10%. But the list was growing and quickly becoming the monster of 90% more time was needed. The engineer had arrived… gilding the lily, polishing the turd, making a silk purse of a sow’s ear? Which would it be?
Procrastination had arrived. Was I wrapped around the wheel? Was I digging to China? Then one morning (ten days ago) on my news feed, I read this article about a Virtual Maker’s Faire. The theme, of course, was about COVID-19. Time to publish or perish. TIME FOR THE CATTLE-PROD. I signed up, still with no clear signs of life. Just a gut feeling. Last week my baby took its first breath, then stopped. This past weekend, 12 breaths per minute, at half a liter, at 10 cm-H2O. But it was a harsh, ragged breath. I want her to be as smooth as a Rolls Royce. I want her to win the beauty contest. But that damn cattle-prod. Whose idea was that anyway?!
I’ve had the web hosting and the URL for this site for nearly a year now. Although I’ve done many projects during that time, none of them I felt were worthy of launching a website. Yesterday, I forced myself to stop working on the baby. I grudgingly researched free video editors. I picked one, watched a few tutorials, and choreographed the monologue. I sound like Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I turned in my first YouTube last night. I opened WordPress this morning. I spent most of the morning trying to pick a theme. You see… I hate writing. I’m sure it shows, I’d rather figure out how to make the website than actually write for the website. Procrastination was crawling back in. “Did you see the size of that CHICKEN?” Anything to avoid writing.
But now, I’m coming down to the wire. You see, I put my website name on the entry form for the Maker’s Faire… and so… I wrote down these words. The website gets published tonight and the Virtual Maker’s Faire is tomorrow.
Hell… It’s probably tomorrow somewhere already. Just realized that! World… Sorry I’m late.
I maybe sick, but I’m trying to get better. I’m taking something for it. A cattle-prod.
-Inq