Typically when I decide to make a thing, I do a little research to show me which of several design alternatives I should choose, and then I make it.

Almost always, the thing comes out well enough that it inspires me to do some back-documenting, during which I learn that there were variables I didn't know, or context…I learn a lot.  The thing isn't museum-perfect, but I use it, and people like it, and tell me so, at which point I tell them all the stuff that's 'wrong' with it until I realize that I've passed the 'geek' line, and shut up.

Up until now, I've angsted about this.  I've felt I should do one of two options:

1.  Remake the thing.  I can nearly never do this…my curiosity or practical need was satisfied with the beta version, and I am just not that crazy about the activity to do another one immediately.  This turns the making into work.

2.  Hold off making the thing until I've done the research.  This doesn't work either…I'm not that interested in the research alone…know-it-all's are so tiresome…and darn it, I want my thing!  Clothes to wear, or gear to use…I'm in love and I want it now.  Besides, the research goes winding all over the place, and sometimes the book to use isn't available…this turns the researching into work.

I do not play SCA to work, I play SCA to have fun.  I do not play historical re-enactment, and I don't want to.

So recently, faced with yet another situation where I've dashed ahead and made a compelling thing which turns out to want a good deal of research, I've had a couple of talks with people who know a lot about teaching people, and have come to the conclusion that I was doing the process right all along.

Do you remember in school, where the textbook or the teacher would say, "write a short essay about X" or "define the following new words" and then after you'd done that, then they'd give you the related reading to do?  That order always used to confound me, because I wondered how I was supposed to do a very good job on this task without the background.  Now I understand.

Demanding your brain to do a task, makes you focus better on the reading forever afterwards.  It makes you invest in the concepts, and then the reading is very interesting.  You're passing judgement on yourself, giving yourself your own context.  That sort of reversed order makes it all stick.  Very sneaky.

Furthermore, in SCA A&S context, I have been completely inspired by projects that I thought, "I wonder if I could do a better/different job of that, because I know something about that which isn't presented here."  I am so grateful to those projects, because they drag me down roads I would have never considered before, and I think that's what SCA is about.  Furthermore, I am grateful and impressed by the people who produce projects that they know aren't as perfect as they can make them, just because that vacuum is there allowing someone else to step in and learn/contribute/explore.

Screw the points…I'm gonna be making stuff.  If I have a very good time making stuff, perhaps I'll make more of similar, and then my points will go up.  But the important thing isn't having close-to-perfect stuff, the important thing is the LEARNING.