Master of none

Sometimes I struggle to really know what I want to do. Not the stuff that provides an income, not the ordinary things. I mean the other stuff. The things that are supposed to be mine.

One day I'm deep into building an app. The next, me and Emilio get the urge to take the motorcycles out and film a motovlog, and right there in that moment, that is exactly what I want to do. Then I get home and suddenly I'm building an app again. Or working on Athlas and Kairos. Or reading the new EN standard for the day job. Or editing a video from the latest adventure. Or maybe I should become an MMA fighter now?

And the show goes on and on and on and on.

Small bits of everything

This is where me and my mind start arguing. I do small bits all the time, but I never really sit down and work hard and well on one specific thing.

Social media is full of talented people who have perfected exactly that. Some daytrade, some draw, some have pushed commits to the same repo every day for five years. They pick one craft and they hammer on it until it shines. Meanwhile my mind runs free, switches lanes, picks something up, drops it, picks up something else, and at the end of the day it feels like I get nothing done.

Feels like. Because I know that's not entirely true. I am obviously crafting something. Or someTHINGS.

But the feeling stays anyway: is what I'm doing correct, or is there something wrong with me?

The thread I keep missing

Here is what I notice when I actually write the list down. The app, the motovlog, the editing, Athlas, Kairos, even the EN standard. Every single one of them is building something. The material changes, the making does not.

And the things bleed into each other more than I give them credit for. Filming a motovlog teaches you video. Video teaches you storytelling. Storytelling sneaks into how you pitch a product. The product forces you to read standards, and the standards shape what you build next. Nothing is wasted. It compounds sideways instead of upwards.

As for the people I compare myself to: I'm looking at one slice of them. I have no idea what they dropped to get there, or if they lie awake wondering if they should have kept the other things too.

So that is something I'm actively working on: not comparing at all. They say comparison is the thief of joy, and I've let that thief take enough. The only version of me worth measuring against is the one from yesterday.

The part that gets left out

People love to sum all of this up with the famous quote:

Jack of all trades, master of none.

But there is a longer version floating around, the part that usually gets cut:

...but oftentimes better than a master of one.

I'll take that.

Because maybe there is nothing wrong with me. Maybe I'm just a machine that needs a lot of inputs. A machine that builds software, runs a company, chases clients, ships product at the day job, reads standards, digs through annual reports, films motovlogs, cuts video, devours fiction and writes posts like this one. Because that is what keeps the mind burning: ascending on several fronts at once instead of climbing a single ladder one rung at a time.

The show goes on.