2015.07.30
tl;dr: how much of expertise is legit, and how much is "just" a collection of good tricks?
Last night at practice for Honk @ The Hatch Shell I played with John, a tuba-player just out of college who was trying to make a go of full time freelance career of it.
It reminded me how recently I realized that Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band, despite the touring they do and the amazing way they launched "Honk!" as a cultural thing, isn't an exclusive bunch of semi-pros but is open to aspiring beginners. Admittedly it looks like they look for more woodshed practice than I've historically put in, but still, it's interesting to know that if my current beloved band ever blew up it might be an option. (And in general I've been learning that tuba players seem to be in short supply.)
So, I feel like I punch above my weight a bit, tuba-wise; I certainly don't practice enough, but I have an ok ear and over the year I've gathered a lot of bass lines and what not that I get a lot of mileage out of.
Similarly, I met with my buddy Jeff today, and he is using me as an amateur game design consultant; another field where I'm proud of some of the stuff I've done but also feel like a duffer. (I'm kind of chuffed that he said talking to me is kind of refreshing, in terms of my kind of Jack of All Trades approach to things like music and game making, or that there's a general vibrance I pull off, relative to a lot of the people he runs into on a daily basis.) I quoted the old TMBG lyric "There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third" which is how I feel about my approach to game design, so often going back to the well of handrolled x/y inertia.
Finally, Melissa (who does UX) mentioned wanting to increase her design chops, and that (along with the work I did for JP Porchfest and some personal website refurb I've been mulling over) made me think about my own design skills. And again, I feel like I have a small bag of tricks I come back to, supplemented by some decent intuition and thoughtfulness. (I like what I came up with to fill out the back side of the JP Porchfest poster, http://jpporchfest.org/2015/downloads/JP_Porchfest_v5.pdf ) It reminded me of the infographic I'm putting here for future reference; I love seeing shortcuts like that.
So I dunno. I understand full time experts can sometimes develop ungodly skills, but it feels like a number of disciplines play by 80/20 rules, where 80% can come pretty quickly with concentrated study, and sometimes that's absolutely plenty to get the job. Maybe this is all just kind of a balm for Impostor Syndrome (Like Ian Bogost says "The solution to impostor syndrome is to accept that you are in fact a fraud and just get on with it.")
from tumblr:
people: i can see ur bra thru ur shirt
me: o no!! now everyone can see that i, an average teen wear a bedazzled titty holder to hide the nip nops that society condemns as satanic pepperonis because it's not like we were born w them omg i'm so embarrassed :'[