Don’t Worry, Adam Savage Says It’s Okay
I’ve been doing a bit of soul searching these days, chastising myself about having a lack of focus in my hobbies and interests. I was beginning to think that having a wide breadth of interests was preventing me from going in depth into any one subject, that hobbies were wearing me down instead of lifting me up.
And last night I watched this TED talk from Adam Savage about his passions:
I’ve always been a man of many interests. To put it in William Gibson’s words from a recent conversation with Cory Doctorow, “My problem is that all things are increasingly interesting to me.”
I’m thirty-five years old and I feel that I am running out of runway to change the world, or at least impress my son. I’ve always equated success with becoming some sort of expert in one thing. That I should grow up and cast off the bulk of my interests to focus on that one true passion. And that’s crap.
Here’s the thing: my problem is not one of focus, but discipline. More specifically, the discipline to finish something, to follow an interest all the way down the rabbit hole and out the other side.
My whole life, I’ve been most interested in the connectedness of things, the relationships and overlaps between seemingly disparate concepts. It would be against my nature to ignore any passing interest—in fact, I should be taking on more, piling to the rafters of my brain with anything I can find.
There is a fine line between exploring a lot of interests and making a hobby out of collecting interests. One should be learning, making, doing. Like Adam Savage, I should be building my own Maltese Falcon. The difference is my son thinking of me as a guy who reads a lot and keeps a bunch of lists or as a mad scientist who makes things. Which would you rather be?
And you know what? I’m going to finish cleaning my workshop today.
