Humble brag

I heard the term ''humble brag'' on the t.v. show NCIS: LA.  It's when you complain about something, but really it's just a way of showing off:  on the t.v. show, it was something along the lines of "It's so annoying when I go to the gym, and even though I'm all sweaty and wearing ratty clothes, it's hard to finish my workout because people keep hitting on me."


So, here's mine:  I get clever ideas of interesting things to build, faster than I can build them.  And I keep writing songs faster than I can record them.

The implication is that I'm this genius, modern-day Leonardo DaVinci -- both mechanical and artistic (so is Guitar Cousin, BTW).


Many days while commuting to work on public transport, I design various things (in my notebook) I want to build out of wood.  It often takes me a few days to work out the details of the design -- but usually less than a week.

But, I only get two afternoons during the weekend of "shop time".  So I end up falling behind.

Last week, for example, I got an idea for a wooden tool tote (an open-topped toolbox).  So I started to build it over the weekend.  But then this week I came up with an idea for a wooden, stringed folk instrument.  So now I want to build that as well.


Similarly, I come up with a new song idea about once a month.  Usually I knock out the lyrics in a day, and have a pretty good sense of the arrangement and instrumentation as well.  So, all I need to do is record it. 

But at the moment I'm more in the mood to build things out of wood than to record songs.  Which is fine.  But now I have a lovely backlog of songs that I really need to just sit down and record.


The solution, of course, is to win the multi-million-dollar lottery, drop back to 40% time at work, and stay home doing interesting, creatively productive things the other three days.

I'll see what I can do about that.  :)


(Note:  the photo of the workshop isn't mine; nice, though.  It's from the Wikpedia page on "workshops".)


--GG