Oh Right.
Sometimes I think I should have become an inventor. That would have been something right up my alley. Sitting there with my think cap on, scribbling mathematical formulas on endless sheets of paper. Fretting around my Frankenstein-esque laboratory and suddenly screaming “ EUREKA “ whilst constructing some immensely complex machine.
The trouble is : I’m horrible at math, even worse at constructing anything with my hands and don’t have a think cap. But I do think outside the box a lot. From time to time I come up with a question of something I want done or something I need that requires fairly recent technology. Its not that I want a food replicator, a Hyperdrive or a Colonial starfighter for my collection. Sometimes I am fretting over an problem and conclude that the solution of the problem must lie in the combination of using technology X , software Y and method Z. When I can’t do it mysellf I step up to the guyz who know about X Y and Z and propose them my solution, naively assuming that they can give me the glue to stick X Y and Z together.
And then I get this blank stare. Not this look that they want to put me into a looney bin, no this look like … “ Oh My God .. thats a brilliant Idea , better not let him know “. Erm .. they mumbel , as I see the faint glow of an idea flaring up in the back of their heads .. “ That doesn’t exist yet “ they mumble. The undertone of their voice betraying that I have just made some kind of startling discovery. “ But thats not a bad idea”
Get is often.
And I get this often. Its not that i’m asking science fiction style solutions, but that in my mind I paste technologies, methods and a lot of “outside the box” thinking together to come up with the solution of a problem that I have. I don’t have the expertise of knowing HOW to glue it all together , but I just know it will work if I combine X Y and Z. So has a great inventor been lost ? I don’t think so. I’m sure that somewhere out there there are people who thought of what little old me has thought of . But the problem with the experts is : they know their field of work very deeply. I have a broader technological knowledge ( not as deep but a little wider) so I start to fish from a bigger , but more shallow pond. Thats how I come up with these crazy “all over the board” style solutions. And I don”t need a million for my bright idea, If i would get a penny for every raised eyebrow that I have conjured up on the face of the experts .. I would be rich already. So maybe i’m a genius, or maybe i’m insane. … I’m just hoping for a little bit of both.