I’ve often found it hard to come to terms with the fact that I’m easily distracted by new creative pursuits; over many years I’ve had a go at everything from film-making and photography to coding and graphic design. Some of these I’ve properly studied while others I’ve just taught myself.
It can sometimes be disheartening to be only slightly good at things and not really good at any one of them. I’m jealous of people who have pursued a single craft, art form or creative discipline. I wish I’d started earlier, or stuck to something, or specialised.
But as I signed up for yet another course (I’m back to music production) I realised that maybe the dabbling is the craft itself. When I think about the things I do on a regular basis in my work—problem-solving, working out how to make things, prototyping—it seems to make sense that I can do a bit of everything. Most importantly it seems to matter that I acknowledge the dabbling and work with it.
I wonder how well we support people to dabble. Most of what we do in learning and work is still very much about specialisms. Or we look up to the true polymaths who are brilliant at everything they do. But we need people who can have a go at things, not only so they can acquire broad skills but also so they can remove the fear of creating, having a go.
Thinking about my own needs I know that I need to take a more deliberate approach to this partial learning. I need to better map out what I can do, what I want to do, what I’ll need to be able to do. And I’ll need to find the gaps and the opportunities for improvement. I need to commit to a programme of amateurism.