I'll just be good at everything, mmkay?


"Everyone should know everything about at least one thing, and at least one thing about everything"
A quote I particularly like. I would like to think I have many talents, but I'd rather be really good at at least one thing than average at everything. (Plus, what's to say you can't be above average at many things as well as your one or two specialties?)

I settle for nothing less than being the master at everything. Especially humility. No, with Asperger's Syndrome, I'm actually designed by nature to cultivate a very narrow skillset to such an extreme degree that I have to depend on people around me to fill my earthly needs. I have a theory that people like me emerge as society develops the capacity to handle us draining it, to encourage advance.

It follows that you shouldn't be asking if you want to be a jack of all trades or a king of one, but rather which would benefit society more. Of course to do that you have to put the needs of others before yourself. . .

I've been developing a really bad brainstorming habit lately. My free time is spent developing new ideas and interests and projects, then filing them and starting even NEWER ideas and projects. The reason I say this is a bad habit is becuase rather than research what classes I need to take this fall or job hunt, I brainstorm.

I've always had varied interests but I crave focus. If I could just complete one project, I'd be happy. Since I can't seem to stop thinking and brainstorming, I've been looking for a way to make money from my ideas.

Currently I'm starting preliminary work on a RPG PvP Game, a Band, Pixel-Art, a Book, a Webcomic-or-3, blogging, ideas for some videos for my Youtube account, and then of course a way to build these concepts into websites I can network and advertise on/for.

I really would like a lot of skill in just one area, then I could have a harem of people with other talents to complete other concepts for me.

That's the basic premise of agriculture leading to the establishment of permanent settlements and eventually cities and civilization. An increase in food production means there are people doing things other than getting food, such as craftsmanship or art or the like.

Y'know. People like you. I kid, I kid.

Anyway, there's the argument that specialization occurs due to increasing competition within a field. In order to maintain a livelihood, a cobbler has to be better than the guy down the street. In a small town, though, you could see a cobbler/tailor/auto rental/septic repair shop, because there isn't competition in those fields.

Jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one

By that logic I should make a pixel-art webcomic about a band and then also make the music that the band plays and maybe one of them has a book and maybe one of them is trying to go back to school to better himself? :/

The ultimate goal of the jack of all trades was to become a polymath, someone with enough experience in multiple fields to incorporate various principles to create something new or different. Leonardo da Vinci is probably the most famous example of a polymath.

So go for it!

I don't like committing to just one thing and measuring myself by it. I think a lot of varying interests are important.

BRILLIANT! \o/

Just kidding, but no, actually, that could be pretty cool. o_0



At any rate, I, too suffer from idea influx. A lot of them used to be books, but now most of them are games. Some have actually turned into both! XD

Really, though, write it all down. You never know when it might be useful. I've come up with ideas from out of the blue that I actually might be able to implement based on what I'm already doing, which is how my DOS-style game got its start. Most of the graphics are toned-down versions of tiles I made at random when I was bored just before I got into programming, then decided I'd make into a game after my first VB class. Said original game has grown immensely as I got new ideas that worked for it, both in the style of the tiles (the originals were all in the default palette in MS Paint and now might pass for GBA quality in many cases), the number of tiles, the game mechanics, and everything else. There's a lot that I can do with the system's base now, and it's currently being used for two projects for sure and a potential third, plus a few others that got dropped along the way. If I can totally run away with a bunch of tiles I did in MS Paint and make two games for sure out of it, I imagine other people can come up with some really great stuff if they only write it down and give it a little love every once in a while.



Actually, that's probably not the best example. A better one is that good stories don't get written in one draft. I've been working on some of mine for years and have refined some of them into much better products. Actually, I'm currently reviving one of my older ones that was dropped because it just didn't work out. With newer ideas, I think it's becoming a much better product than the strange, self-inserted book I had an idea for in high school.

I get bored by repitition far too easily to consider myself, past, present, or future, a master of any one thing. While I'd consider myself specialized in art first and foremost, even that much is far too generalized, and far too suspectible to habitation in its diversity to get anything worthwhile out of it.

For instance, right now I'm in the phase where I want to create a Warcraft 3 map, using an idea that I wrote up ages ago. My goal is to learn how to work with JASS properly, and to get at least one full, working version of the map up. I don't know how long this will last or how long it will take, but after I've done this I suspect I'll return to doodling with pencils or somesuch.