This past weekend in Portland, Oregon, was a perfect storm for geeks: a mini Maker Faire at OMSI, the Kickstarter-funded "disruptive creativity" XOXO festival, not to mention the end of the TBA art show. I checked out some of the free "Fringe" XOXO events, took my kids to Maker Faire, and met up with some Kickstarter folks at a get-together they hosted nearby, and along the way collected a pile of business cards and flyers.
At the Maker Faire, my eight-year-old daughter was into everything. It took us nearly an hour to get past the first two large tents: bubble-wand-making, MaKey MaKey instruments, spinner painting ... Then we saw the Trackers Earth folks with their archery camp, the swordmanship school Academia Duellatoria (next to a blacksmith), laser-cutters, print-making, trebuchets, bike-hacking, yarn-spinning, chocolate molding ... She wanted to do it all. Oh, and then when we got home we met a new neighbor who was throwing clay pots on a little pottery wheel, and she immediately clamored for her own pottery wheel as well.
I'd tell her, look, there's no way you can do all of this. You have to pick and choose what you want to learn, because there's simply not enough time (or money) to go after all of these things at once. And then I emptied out my pockets of all the business cards and flyers that I picked up over the weekend, things that I thought would be cool to write blog posts about ... and I realized where she gets it from.
Because I want to do all those things, too. I tried a little paper marbling demo and thought, hey, I could do that! And then we met a guy who does silk screening, which I've always wanted to do — and maybe I could combine that with this Lumi sunlight-based fabric printing I saw at the Kickstarter XOXO booth. How about soldering? I should totally learn that and, wow, is that really how you make chiptunes? It's probably a good thing I missed out on getting an XOXO badge after all.
By the way, this is not actually my post about Maker Faire or XOXO. This is about one of the inherent dangers of geekiness, which is only compounded when you're a blogger. You see, not only do I want to do a little bit of everything, I also feel compelled to write about it all. When I have a great experience or meet somebody who's doing something awesome or read a book that I really enjoyed, I feel guilty keeping it to myself when I have this great place to share it. When I read about an eight-year-old kid who decided to start a board game company instead of a lemonade stand, it's hard not to drop everything and write about it. What if my post is the one that helps tip the scales? What if I don't write about this book and you never pick it up and the author gives up and goes back to her day job because her book didn't sell?
I have enormous stacks of books literally piling up in my office: that small stack in the photo is just some of the ones I've read (lots of picture books there) which I haven't gotten around to writing about yet. I won't even bother showing you the piles I haven't starting reading. On my iPad I have several folders devoted to apps that I'm considering for a Core Dump column. In my basement I have a shelving unit specifically for board games to review — and it's running out of space.
So maybe it's time for a different approach. Perhaps I need to take the advice that I give my daughter: pick something and focus on it. Don't try to do everything. Maybe I need to stop being a reviewer and start being a curator: instead of telling you about everything, I should just focus on the stuff that really grabs me. Maybe I should write about things because I think you'll want to hear about them, and not because I feel guilty if I don't.
And, hey, once I'm not writing about everything I come across, that should give me a bunch of extra time to to take up a new hobby, right? I've always been fascinated with stop-motion animation...
