{"id":537,"date":"2010-11-15T23:27:17","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T07:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2010-11-15T23:27:17","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T07:27:17","slug":"the-danger-of-because-i-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":"The Danger of “Because I Can”"},"content":{"rendered":"

After writing my last post<\/a> about my, er, somewhat gross experiment with spinning cat hair, I realized something.\u00a0 I wasn’t trying to spin cat hair because I had something I wanted to make out of it, I wasn’t doing it because it brought me joy, I wasn’t even doing it because I thought it was a good idea.<\/p>\n

No, my only reason for doing it was, in fact, to see if I could.<\/p>\n

The “Because I Can” phenomenon can be a good thing.\u00a0 It can lead to crazy-amazing feats of knitting, like a gas station cozy<\/a>.\u00a0 Or a<\/a><\/a> car<\/a> cozy<\/a>.\u00a0 Or any number of guerilla knitting projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, to some people, all of those projects are crazy too.\u00a0 It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.<\/p>\n

The real problem with the “Because I Can” urge is that it leads to doing things you really don’t need or want to do, just because you can.\u00a0 I’ll knit a sweater out of my dog’s fur…because I can!\u00a0 I’ll knit a sock with super-weird construction and uncomfortable seams on the bottom…because I can!\u00a0 I’ll spin a fiber out of things I find in the street…because I can!<\/p>\n

None of these things are necessarily wrong<\/em>, mind you.\u00a0 They’re just…well, they don’t align with my values, let’s put it that way.<\/p>\n

So getting back to the original point – the motivation behind spinning cat hair wasn’t “Oh, I can get something nifty out of this”, it was solidly a “Let’s see if I can” (little sibling to the “Because I Can” impulse).\u00a0 And, frankly, I just don’t have time for that kind of thing these days.\u00a0 I don’t need to do “Because I Can” projects – I’ve got plenty of real<\/a> projects<\/a> with real outcomes<\/a> to finish.<\/p>\n

In short, the cat “fiber” is going in the trash, along with the little bit I’d already spun up.\u00a0 Sanity has returned.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bear Kitty’s response?\u00a0 “Does this mean you’ll stop interrupting my naps to brush me?\u00a0 ‘Cause that was pretty annoying.\u00a0 Can I go back to sleep now?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After writing my last post about my, er, somewhat gross experiment with spinning cat hair, I realized something.\u00a0 I wasn’t trying to spin cat hair because I had something I wanted to make out of it, I wasn’t doing it because it brought me joy, I wasn’t even doing it because I thought it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8,27],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bear-kitty","tag-because-i-can","tag-mistakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}