Am I Broken?

caution - nutter!

I find myself having to do things. Not normal things like work, eat, sleep, raise the family etc. I do engage in all of these tasks but what I’m talking about are all of the other things. I’m a compulsive tinkerer (is that a word?). These things I do are not for profit or recognition (although that is VERY nice) but mostly out of curiosity or the need to create or understand something. Not everyone I know is built like this…so am I broken?

Let me expand…I have a full-time job and it pays the bills. I love to take photographs which is mostly a hobby but I also do charge for photographic services through Weymouth Photography to make a little more money to buy gear etc.  I have a wife and daughter. Over the last few years I have built several websites; photographywired (which has fallen by the wayside), podgoat, this one and a few sites for other people which have been happy to pay for my services.  I’m not a trained web developer (and I recognise there aren’t many who are…and I’m not sure it’s important), I’ve just kind of fallen into these projects because I’ve wanted to know what was possible and what I could achieve. I’ve learnt lots. I’ve also become very busy and at times lost sight of whats important. Thats why this year I’ve started the year by where possible trying to throttle back on the time I spend on all of this ‘stuff’ and concentrate on placing my energy where its needed (ie my family, my job, rest,  and anything which brings in money to feed the family). This new mindset has helped, if tasks don’t add value to my life (and I’m not talking financial) then I have to start questioning why I’m doing them. It seems though I’m my own worst enemy. As much as this new philosophy makes perfect and logical sense to me I can’t help myself from having new ideas and feel a compulsion to see them through into some kind of created state (notice I don’t say completion, I’m notoriously bad at that bit).

Shortly after this new years drive to throttle back I registered grannysupermarket.com as I thought it would be an interesting project for me to try some other open source content management systems on. This morning I started looking at how to develop my own android applications and have had an idea that I feel is worth building an app for (I’ve never done any development of this kind in my life). Now I’ve had that idea though it’s almost impossible for me to stop myself from reading about it, learning and tinkering. Common sense tells me it’s daft. These projects are very unlikely to a) get finished b) make money or c) bring world peace. They will though provide me with hours of distraction from more important tasks and possibly give me a small amount of pleasure (peppered with frustration). It seems like a really stupid trade-off. I usually pride myself on having common sense but this kind of compulsion seems to bypass this bit of my brain……I’m sure I’m not alone…..So am I broken? Is there a fix? Does curiosity Kill Cats?