On Deviation
Thursday January 24, 2008 | OnIt probably comes to no surprise of anyone that I am, in fact, an idiot. I hold the same shallow, meaningless, selfish existence every person my age tends to be prone to. However, for some reason I’m oddly doing reasonably well with my life. There are two things about my personality that have probably set me apart from other people, and are probably the sole reasons why my accomplishments stack up higher than most other people my age. The first is my willingness to work, work, and work some more until something is done. The second is my insistence that no matter what is done, it must be done right. If you have made a mistake, you have made a mistake. 98% is a failure, because you did something wrong. I think it’s this insistence to do right that’s driven me to learn, as well. After all, unless I know what is in fact right, I won’t be doing it wholly right.
Oddly, despite the “if any one element is wrong, the entire thing is wrong” attitude, I’m still terrible at math. One would think the elements would go hand in hand, but surprisingly not. I fall in love with philosophical mathematical concepts rather than numerical.
The individual human being is utterly, completely unimportant. In the modern first world, we’ve developed something of a “hive mind” where no matter how obscure, there is something out there to match what you’re thinking.
I read a Stephen King story when I was much, much younger (see? Shallow idiot) that introduced a concept that floats in my head every time I try something new. “Steam engine time” – the idea of a collective human creative unconsciousness that influences numerous unrelated people to start working toward the same end, as was in the case of the steam engine’s invention – usually stops me from ever trying something I think of as “too radical.” Someone else has done it better.
It was just that time.