2023-10-10 Struggling with cooperation
I just ran all the way to the in-laws in order to water their garden. It was a nice run. I wish I could run all day but sadly my feet, ankles and knees start hurting so I can't just keep running for endless kilometres. Perhaps if I took it easy and let myself sit down and enjoy a break along the way that would extend my range?
A friend wondered whether I'd be interested in looking at some notes they had for a game of theirs. It breaks my heart to say this by I'm a bad reviewer, an opinionated editor, I don't work well with people because I have very specific ideas and I'm stubborn and easily distracted… Oof, what can I say?
If you send me more than 10 pages of stuff I'll be paralysed and won't know what to do. I can't finish reading it. I can't tell you I haven't read it. I'll feel bad. You'll feel bad. And yet, I'd be happy to help.
I know that I thirst for that feeling of mutual enthusiasm. Sadly, it is extremely rare. Probably my niche is too narrow and full of people with very specific aesthetic preferences. What can I tell them that doesn't act like a cold blanket, extinguishing their enthusiasm? I know my stuff is full of typos but when I write, I want all the things to be perfect. White-space, orthography, typography, punctuation, layout, references, table of contents, index, flow… At the office, I call myself a pixel-bitcher and I know very few other people that share my attention to detail. At the same time, I'm a doer not a talker. I like writing, I like programming, I don't like arguing about definitions. I don't like asking more people for opinions instead of proposing options. I often feel people like to talk because they don't want to take responsibility where as I'm the kind of person that would rather write a prototype and thereby force people to react positively – or negatively. At least now they have something to rub against. And if they don't have very good arguments, my idea wins because I have working code. I suspect the kind of people that like working with me are the kind of people that work on something else: a sales manager, a project manager, an artist – these people can enjoy what I do and I don't meddle in their spheres and they don't meddle in mine, and yet we talk about the goals and where we're at and what we need to do and we're enthusiastic about the thing we're doing and I love that.
So… what to do? Perhaps collaboration needs a different format. Like, we set up a date and time and meet over Jitsi or something like that? Send me a PDF and I'll give it half an hour and then we talk about whatever comes to mind? I'm still trying to figure out how best to work with other people when it comes to my free time. I don't have this problem at the office because I do it for the money and I'm a senior. I can push my way of working with people and I can get results. I can delegate work to other people and we can ask other people for help. I'm good at getting the information we need and writing down the agreements we made. When collaborating on a piece of software I wrote in my free time, or on a document I wrote for a game, I'm no longer in the mode of doing it for the money. Now I'm doing it for love!
Perhaps a call would work. It doesn't have to be video, probably a screen-share would do as we leaf through pages and talk about the things you want to achieve and the things that I noticed, or something like that?
Another thing that seems to work for me is sending emails back and forth. Perhaps the commonality is that it's a back and forth that works in small chunks. I don't want to read 250 pages and turn in a big document with suggested edits. That kills all the joy. I do like talking with people about the thing they love, though.
I think that's what I'm going to try and suggest to my friend.
#Collaboration #Writing #Reviews
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Next: The potential of interaction
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