I have a compulsion to make stuff. Doesn’t really matter what it is: written work, paintings, software, food, I don’t care. I just have to make something as long as I enjoy the process and the end product is something I can look at after the fact and say “I made this.” I love playing music, but that wouldn’t scratch the itch. Composing music would.

My go-to is writing, mainly fiction. I went to grad school for this, but I also translate Spanish fiction to English. To a lesser degree, I write stuff that sometimes makes it to this website†For better or worse…, but I also keep daily and monthly journals that I share with no one. In the past couple years I’ve gotten into ink and watercolor art†I am endlessly fascinated by the idea of illustrated journals and urban sketching. It’s an endless rotation of mediums that masquerades as a penchant to accumulate hobbies.

It’s also how I sustain my projects for the long-term.

I’m not the type of person who can obsess over a single thing until it’s done. I get so dang bored after months of the same thing and I drift off more and more each day into rabbit holes on Reddit and Wikipedia in which I suddenly come-to and I’ve written only half a sentence†Sometimes a novel really is written one word at a time..

Having multiple hobbies changes things up for the better. I get to stretch a fresh set of muscles, engage a different set of neurons, stare at a different kind of blank slate. I don’t drift as much, I have more fun, I end up doing more than I would have if I focused on just one thing.

I always felt guilty not having a singular focus. The world seems to reward people who get really good at something - doctors, athletes, writers, programmers, scientists, video gamers, lots of stuff - if not with money, then with attention or a note of awe†Fortunately for me, attention is a disincentive.. I bet we can all relate to the satisfaction of watching people on YouTube doing stuff well. My parents instilled in me during my childhood that I should always strive to be the best at whatever I do, but there can only be a handful of “the best” out of billions of people in the world. They instilled the value, but when I got into the real world I quickly realized that, actually, I’m extraordinarily mediocre at lots of stuff, even stuff I felt like I was good at. It turned out that I’m not the kind of person who’s “the best” at anything †Cue some Crate-And-Barrel halfwit who thinks, ‘Everyone’s the best at something,’ or, ‘You’re the best at being you.’ Shut up. You’re the best at being a doofus.. Most people aren’t.

There are relatively few people who are truly remarkable in their chosen vocation. The rest of us have to make do with whatever the extent of our resources and abilities will permit. Most people, myself included, cannot or will not be outstanding at anything. We’ll be fine within the scope of our jobs and maybe even pretty decent at the one or two of the skill-based hobbies we have time and energy to pursue. We’ll hit a hard cap with respect to achievement, whether we know it or not. Fame or fortune will elude us. As someone who was usually near the top of the class in the microcosm of school, it was difficult to deal with not getting top marks at everything.

As I got older I came to feel that that’s pretty OK. The more important thing is to enjoy what I’m doing and to make things I’m proud of. But then it seems like there’s the distinct, but related, incentive (likely exacerbated by our algorithm-based world) that if you can’t be the best, at the very least you should be prolific. Tech recruiters used to pry into how many git commits you had on your personal repos†Which all engineers realize is a pile of garbage. Do those recruiters recruit on their nights and weekends? No? Then I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like you’re passionate enough to recruit me…, or how many projects you had in your portfolio. The internet was gamified with likes and karma and upvotes. How many attaboys can you get? I’m now stuck with a drive to make more stuff that’s been difficult to shake. I still feel like a total waste if I’m not churning out lots of things. I don’t know what to do about that, but it seems like an irrational completion-oriented lizard brain impulse. My more-rational self also happened to realize that if I half-ass a whole lot of things in parallel instead of trying to whole-ass a single thing, I end up with several times more asses in the same amount of time†The math checks out, trust me.. I notice more consistently the amount of stuff I make instead of realizing only in retrospect way later. There are more completion milestones and that satisfies the urge.

Stagnating on a short story? Translate. Bored of parsing another language? Write a webapp. Annoyed with configuring your web server? Work on a novel. Overwhelmed at the prospect of writing your novel even though you’re halfway through and still believe the premise is actually pretty good despite not having any idea where it should go? Paint a picture.

See? Easy squeasy!

This, really, is only a hack. It’s a way to assuage my anxieties, which is good enough in the shorter term, but the ultimate goal is to internalize a new perspective to eliminate the anxiety entirely. The question I try to give precedence to is not, “Did I finish something today?” but, “Did I do something worthwhile today?” Time spent doing and enjoying is the criterion I want to use to gauge whether I’m heading in the right direction. The ultimate goal now, especially as I age, is to spend a larger portion of my time with people I love and on stuff I enjoy. Keeping lots of fun ideas in the back pocket helps ensure that there’s always something I’m eager to do. And that leads to more doing. Even my lizard brain can get on board with that.