I've always known this, but probably most of my life I forget that its true, and that is the fact that I am first and foremost a builder. Or perhaps more accurately, I'm a conceptual architect.
But I waffle between being a low level builder and a high level architect. Because I am good at and I appreciate the finer details of the lowest level constructions. I could design the threads on a screw if needed. I could engineer a simple Lego brick, and marvel at the tolerances they achieve with just plastic, and be blown away by the perfect set of ratios between bump size and spacing, thickness, etc - the things that are what make Lego bricks so much better than other kinds of bricks.
But I wouldn't want to actually design and engineer bricks. Instead I look at them and consider what could made with them.
I like to invent new little constructs. But, even before I can go through the sometimes mundane process of actually implementing said mechanism, I've forged ahead to conceptualizing an entire system built around this core idea. And then I think about what that system might be used for. Stars appear in my eyes.
Because I am torn between the low level and the high level, sometimes I get nothing done, because I know I don't have the time to engineer all the lowest level stuff and therefore I cannot get to the higher level stuff.
Now of course, most people fantasize about being "at the top".. being a rock star, but not a studio musician; being an Architect of buildings but not a construction worker; or a Novelist over a columnist of a small newspaper. And they think they can go right to the top. I'll admit, I've thought this as well, with all of the above.
I never spent the time to master the guitar, or culinary arts, or creative writing, though I've dabbled in all these things. But I have spent excessive amounts of time studying computers, programming and hardware design, over a good percentage of my life. Because that is my passion.
I've learned that my ultimate job is not as a programmer, but as an architect of systems, with the knowledge of how it all works at a low level. Knowing that I could, if needed, implement every part of it, given unlimited time and resources.
Unfortunately, a lot of this work looks like you are just drawing pretty diagrams and charts. Which I've been doing since I was a child. And nobody understood what I was doing then, either. Here's to hoping I can find my calling of conceptualizing and producing complex systems, IE, making pretty pictures.
