Sometimes, for the good of your own literary quality, it’s a good idea to break from a large project every once in a while and write whatever the hell you feel like.

Today, I just wanted to write a little bit about the benefits of struggling through learning something the hard way. This is hardly the first time I’ve taught myself, often through trial and error, how to do something, but it’s the first time I’ve really tried to document it.

A reason to learn something like how to edit a nif file is not hard to find. For me, I wanted to increase my skill set. Moreover, I wanted to get back into modding for games. Then, there is the challenge level. It’s incredibly frustrating not being able to do something, but when you finally realize what you were doing wrong all the time, the satisfaction as everything goes right is hard to describe. I suppose I can include not wanting to rely on someone else to bring my ideas to life. They’re my ideas, and who else is better qualified to do them?

Learning in a classroom is fine and dandy, I thoroughly enjoyed college and often miss it, but there is nothing better than learning hands-on for me. Theories and concepts never mean much to me until it comes to life. It was like that in science class particularly. I could read a mathematical equation over and over and still not understand it until we performed the actual experiments that proved it. I remember standing in a lab with my partner using different temperatures of hot water to research Newton’s Law of Cooling and the properties of black metal vs reflective metal (useful to know for cooking) and being late for the actual class because the cooler liquid took so long. Lesson learned. This is why I always add cream to my hot drinks first off. I think that was also a question on the test.

I suppose things like that is why I prefer actually doing over reading about it. Sometimes I get impatient with reading about the theory, or the instructions, realizing I could probably figure it out better just by doing it. That has caused me no end of pain, but at the same time… I feel good about it because it’s allowed me to actually figure it out by myself. Pain, in of itself, is also a very good teacher. On the other hand, sometimes I actually broke things.

The Elder Scrolls mythos actually comes to mind here, a book I had read during playing one of the games, The Final Lesson. It had stuck in my mind for a long time after reading it, and writing up this post reminded me of it again. In it, a master had two apprentices. Their paths separated, and one had to rely on himself, and the other continued learning from the master. It’s a short story, so if you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it. Learning on my own often brings that story to mind.