Starts

Everything that has a beginning as an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. ~Buddha


Fundamentally, I am an entrepreneur at heart. I am not an entrepreneur in the sense that I have lots of new ideas with which to begin an enterprise. I am an entrepreneur in the respect that I love beginning new endeavors - I love the challenge of bringing order to the chaos of an new undertaking and I love the learning that goes with immersing myself in learning new skills.

I enjoy the chaos at the start of a new project. For many people, the chaos is extremely uncomfortable. The uncertainty of how the chaos will shake out and become order, it if will become order, causes them angst. Not me. I am comfortable being uncomfortable. I am comfortable not knowing if a new undertaking will progress, let alone have any chance of coming to a successful conclusion, I am comfortable not knowing how to take the next step on the project. For me, this unknown period is when I find myself being the most creative.

I thrive on herding cats. I feed off the electric energy, the nervous energy, that radiates from a team at the beginning of a project. I find it especially exciting when the activity being undertaken is brand new, is charting new territories, is not a variation on a theme. I never get bored when leading one of these endeavors as it makes use of one of my skills, the ability to help breathe order into chaos.

I am generally interested into a project up until that point that I am able to help the team move to a place of relative harmony. Once, the celestial beings, the sun, the moon and the stars have come into alignment, once the sailing becomes smooth, I begin to lose interest. If the waters are calm for long, I become completely disinterested, have trouble focusing on the task at hand. I have work friends who get the most fun out of leading teams through the middle of a project when the extreme chaos has been eliminated while others love taking a project down the final stretch and seeing it through to completion. Both of those scenarios bore me and I find myself seeking out new adventures to start. I become completely by the beginnings. The middle and ending phases of the project are equally important. It's just that they don't keep my juices flowing. My mind, when thinking about those phases, finds itself dried of any creative output.

The other beginnings that completely consume my focus is starting a new hobby or other such activity. I have had many hobbies over the years. Some last many years such as my hobby of refereeing soccer. Others are fleeting like the few weeks I was interested in the stock market. I have become adept at photography and can talk to you about f-stops, depth of field, film types, and the rule of thirds. I can craft custom handles for knives with a variety of exotic woods and other accoutrements, pick out the best steel for a blade, create the sheath from leather, carve designs into the sheath, and dye it. I know lots of facts and have many skills gleaned from my hobbies with backpacking, cycling, creative writing, coaching soccer, growing plants, mountain biking racing, etc.

When I start a hobby, I read voraciously on the subject. I dig for data in books, magazines, the internet, anywhere I can get a tidbit of information. Then I start doing. I do until I become proficient, sometimes really good. I sold a number of the photographs I took back in the 1980s. Once I'm proficient, my interest begins to wane. I never keep at anything long enough to become a true expert, never practice a skill long enough to be considered a true craftsman. I think it's because, the rate of learning for time spent on a hobby diminishes rapidly. In the beginning, a little investment of my time yields great knowledge. Toward the end it's the complete opposite and a lot of time investment yields minor gains in knowledge. Because of the diminishing returns, I will never have achieve the depth of knowledge necessary to earn PHD degree.

Sometimes, I find it frustrating that I am wired up in such a way that I will always be a generalist and will never have the extent of skill/knowledge it takes to be craftsman/expert on any one subject. However, most times, I am content that I am and always will be a generalist, a person with broad knowledge over many subject areas. I like being competent in many different facets of life.