Feel it in my hands

There’s something about knowledge and understanding that is fascinating. With all the technology at our disposal, knowledge is readily available. But understanding is not.

I think of math classes in school where I felt this the most. Because there was a score tied with how well I could grasp the concept of the week. Learning the steps alone did not make it click in my head. Some concepts would click a week too late when we’ve moved onto the next topic.

After graduating and working in software, I feel this understanding and knowledge gap. I have this idea in my head on how to solve a problem. I can write it down and plan it out. Which helps a lot, there’s so much to gain from doing that. I will measure 50 times and cut once. And then realize it’s lopsided and I need to throw away a huge chunk. It’s beneficial to just get in and make a tangible working artifact even if it’s bad. Commercial software is a continual puzzle of trying to get from point a to point b as simply¹ as possible. And as you play with the clay, you get a grasp on how to change the shape of the data in the way you need.

But even if I know the steps of how to do something, that doesn’t mean I grasp it. Or have a proper intuition of how it works. I’ve been doing more painting lately. Watching content online for how colors work together. Like how you can mix complements to get a gray color to get a darker value. But even knowing this, when I try to do it. I feel like I am making a mistake. Despite adding a complement it felt like a bright neon color on the canvas. Even to the point of I asking my teacher (multiple times) if I should leave it as is. Is this alright? Don’t I need to calm this down?! Nope, keep it as it is, he said. So I continued on. I finish filling in the surrounding colors and suddenly the color is in context. It felt like magic, suddenly seeing this wild color just ease in. My knowledge told me I could do this mixture. My eyes thought it was wrong. My intuition still has no understanding of how to get to the final position. But when I feel it in my hands, I understand it a tiny bit more.