Ah, so it's called "vemödalen". Good to have a name for the feeling that keeps coming back to me whenever I think about new ideas to build. It's already been done, likely better than I could ever have. It's probably just one Google search away. It makes me fear searching. I'll just take few more minutes, few more hours, few more days, to toy with my new idea. It's probably been done already. But I don't have to know about it right now. Do I?
Sometimes it's already done 20 times. Otherwise, it truly isn't. Or at least it isn't visible on-line. I think that with age I managed to learn how to invent new flavours of old ideas, things that have not been done before in the exact way I want them to. Is this just me lowering my expectations?
I often find myself resenting tourists. I see all those people taking the same pathetic photos at the Tower of Pisa, photos that have been taken a million times before. Like they couldn't just go to Flickr. But here I am, coding my own hobby project, a thing that has been done a thousand times before. I do it in a different language, using different approach, personalizing it in every way I can, and yet I what I'm doing is nothing but taking yet another photo of the Pisa tower.
Some people say "think locally". Just because it has been done before somewhere else, doesn't mean it's been done near you. Narrow your scope. To your country. To your city. To your family. To yourself. But it feels wrong. The world is connected, and being limited to a subset of it feels... incomplete. Do it full-scale, or don't do it at all. That's what I keep thinking.
I guess many a HNer knows this feeling too. Maybe some of you found a way to make peace with it. I think so, after all, many have probably done it before. If you did, please share.
I apologize for venting out.
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Anyway, it's interesting that I couldn't find any reference to the word "vemödalen" other than The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Did they invent this term? Or at least the name, since like everything else, the identification of the phenomenon has been already done before.
Q. “Are these words real or do you make them up?”
–silhouetteme
Both. They’re real words, that are made up by me. I use the standard of realness established by lexicographer Erin McKean:
“People say to me, ‘How do I know if a word is real?’ You know, anybody who’s read a children’s book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an arbitrary distinction; it doesn’t make a word any more real than any other way. If you love a word, it becomes real.”
I think you are mistaken. What about a popular activity like life drawing? It's an extremely generic task in a sense, but you always end up with a product that's specific to you and to the circumstances of the model, pose etc. It's not a field where a lot of innovation takes place but just maintaining the existing traditions is enough to make it worthwhile.
In fact, as a postgrad studying on a visual art course, the obsession with newness in the culture of art is something I'm beginning to tire of. It seems to serve metonymically as a sign of "youth" which is of course something perennially desirable but not really intellectually a big deal. If you look at the hobbies of retired people you see a different emphasis, which is probably a wiser one.
I've definitely made peace with it to the point its a game. When I think of the idea, I purposely spend a day or two "building it in my head" before I search for it. Then to google to see how others have done it! Humbling sometimes to be sure, but sometimes a thrill to see how far down the track I traveled in a short time.
The difference between that generic picture of the tower and the one I take is that the latter has me in it.
The credits on the video versions all include "Coined by", so yes, they appear to all be neologisms. In one sense, it would be neat if these really were existing words plucked from obscurity. But they're good words, and useful, so I hope they stay.
Sometimes it's already done 20 times. Otherwise, it truly isn't. Or at least it isn't visible on-line. I think that with age I managed to learn how to invent new flavours of old ideas, things that have not been done before in the exact way I want them to. Is this just me lowering my expectations?
I often find myself resenting tourists. I see all those people taking the same pathetic photos at the Tower of Pisa, photos that have been taken a million times before. Like they couldn't just go to Flickr. But here I am, coding my own hobby project, a thing that has been done a thousand times before. I do it in a different language, using different approach, personalizing it in every way I can, and yet I what I'm doing is nothing but taking yet another photo of the Pisa tower.
Some people say "think locally". Just because it has been done before somewhere else, doesn't mean it's been done near you. Narrow your scope. To your country. To your city. To your family. To yourself. But it feels wrong. The world is connected, and being limited to a subset of it feels... incomplete. Do it full-scale, or don't do it at all. That's what I keep thinking.
I guess many a HNer knows this feeling too. Maybe some of you found a way to make peace with it. I think so, after all, many have probably done it before. If you did, please share.
I apologize for venting out.
----
Anyway, it's interesting that I couldn't find any reference to the word "vemödalen" other than The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Did they invent this term? Or at least the name, since like everything else, the identification of the phenomenon has been already done before.