Generalism

I bumped into someone online once, a couple of years ago. It was in an Open University forum, I was just finishing my Certificate in Management and handing in one of my final assignments.

She was a fellow Arian and not the sort of person I’d spoken to online before. She was trite, condescending, and arrogant as hell. But she had a way of cutting through all the crap, and reminded me too much of me. I think that’s why I hung around talking to her.

I seem to remember she was doing a bizarre course, the History of Something Wierd. She’d done plenty before and fancied something different. I asked her why she’d chosen that course, and what she came out with has stuck in my mind ever since. She said “Remember the film Short Circuit? I’m just like that robot; I want input”.

She hit the nail on the head for me, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Input. All of a sudden I realised that that is exactly the way I also seem to work. I’m a guy who tries to do everything all the time, jumping from one experience to the next, never sticking to anything, but moving on in order to, as she well put, get more “Input”.

The problem is, I get bored. I’m pretty good at things. Just things in general. I seem to pick things up pretty easily. Mainly physical things, though I’m not too shabby in the brains department either (a-levels, degree in computing etc). But I always seem to need to do something new, get the next piece of mental stimulation. I guess when you get things quickly, you get bored of them quickly too. Hmm.

I’m not conceited though, just.. Accepting I guess. I suppose because I get good at stuff and move on I never really excel at anything. Perhaps the truest Jack of All Trades. I can skate, ski, play racquet sports, program a computer, type at 60 words a minute, golf, swim, drive, do martial arts, host radio shows, and more besides.

Bizarre to have a complaint about it all, it’d be nice to be able to simply stick at something, be so passionate about an activity that it stays for the rest of life. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t go gung-ho into stuff any more; I figure if I go in slower and take more time to learn whatever it is, then I’ll stay with it longer, possibly for life.

I’m undecided as to whether this is working, though I’m not sure that slowing down the rate of input is the solution.