12.01.2020 Justification for what I do.

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There is a great advantage, for me, in discussing my numerous designs in text. It might well be intensely boring for others to wade though endless pages of the stuff. But nobody demanded you should read every word.

I find it helps me to concentrate on the fine detail. It also saves me having to make too many U-turns. Or the scrapping of expensive materials I can ill afford to replace. The danger is always that inertia rears its ugly head. So inferior designs, once completed, are allowed to stand. Simply because of all the extra work in correcting things. Design twice or three times. Construct only once. Allow for human incompetence error but try to have fun anyway.

Fortunately I am not trying to entertain many thousands of followers. As must many YouTube vloggers. There is an expectation of high standards being constantly maintained. Particularly where there is some financial support from followers. The "hobby" then becomes a commercial, business competition for public attention. In the hope of ever greater financial support relative to other vlogger's output.

Many vloggers now seem to repeatedly request subscriptions, likes and financial support. Which I find rather distasteful. Since many enjoy lifestyles and hobbies well above the average. Why should anybody support you in luxury while you play with your expensive toys? The only valid reason is that they enjoy being entertained by you and what you do. Your personality and your pastime must become at least part of your taxable employment. Wiser persons than I suggest you should not make a business of a hobby.

I always have to finance my own projects. The only [hidden] competition is to provide valid ideas for others to freely copy. Plus [hopefully] it will help me to produce better images. As the only, real reward for all my hard work and foolish expense. Though it could be argued that I am entertaining myself it doesn't feel like that. I really don't measure my activities in that way. Success is obviously important. Failure must provide useful lessons. Or the failure is simply wasted.

My OCD text becomes my drawing board and daily design committee meetings. And, my safety net from falling off my own tottering constructions between modest success and abject failure. As such, I write almost entirely for myself. Any better ideas you can glean from my endless monologues is just a bonus. Take them and run with them to the best of your own ability. If you can.

I come from a long lifetime of genuine equipment poverty. My affording better tools and equipment now is only the result of decades of deliberate impoverishment and making do. Choosing poverty in many things which others take completely for granted. I shan't bore you with the exact details because everybody has completely different standards.

Do not assume that I can afford my hobbies as well as enjoying YOUR comfortable, everyday lifestyle. My lifestyle choices allow me to enjoy my own creativity at the expense of almost everything else. Things you would never dream of going without.

Nobody owes you anything which you have not actually produced yourself. Or paid enough for. Otherwise, the only valid criticism is genuinely constructive and shared only for the benefit of all. To make a better world.

I suppose that is my main reason for doing what I do. To make a better widget in the long series of better widgets. We all stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. Each personal iteration should hopefully improve the quality of widgets and therefore, life itself. Or why bother?

For greater wealth and an even more luxurious lifestyle? How is that working out for you? And when you've made your first million, or billion, what then? Can you maintain the hunger to do better? Isn't the hunger for new and better things what really drives you to get up in the morning? And if so.. do you just buy more stuff? Or do you actually create things? 😉

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