November 29, 2008

Who Knew?


2008 - Salsa - 36 x 60

Okay... Progress Update! I HAVE A DATABASE!!! (knew you'd want to know!) Whatever made me think I needed a spreadsheet? Even 20 yrs ago, on my Windows 3.1, when I first started moving my handwritten ledgers and cards to computer, I knew all I needed was a database... but anyway... now I'm straight again. Bento (for macs) to the rescue.

Which brings me to a little history 'bout moi... I don't learn the way most do. I don't absorb info (especially numbers) readily, I have to figure out stuff for myself... trial and error several times over. I can picture a path but finding it in the dark can be challenging. A lot of time is spent on dead ends, pleasant or grueling cul de sacs of misinformation which I can sometimes learn from (won't go there again! Or, um, that's interesting.) Also important to this learning experience... what works for some doesn't necessarly work for others. And... there is often more than one right answer! Computerese was learned with the same technique... very little imput from others except what I could find on newsgroups and AOL's tutorials. Google was still a silly word with no serious meaning.

That's pretty much the way I've learned everything I know. As a too tall young girl who couldn't wear store-bought clothes, I learned to sew... got to be pretty good, too! Planned to major in Home Ec in college, figuring I could probably fake my way... but alas, they still required courses I couldn't fudge and had no interest in. I'm a real late bloomer to appreciating all a good education can offer... who knew? I just wanted to figure it out for myself.

Art came to me, or I to it, the same way. Had always loved to mess around with paints and drawing, but was completely out of touch with the word 'artist'... it meant nothing more than guiltily wasting time. Again... who knew? Later, I began exploring art more and more, and gradually, over many years when there was much else to be done (figuring out how to cook, how to raise kids, how to garden, how to do what needed to be done) the realization that I'd climbed a damned respectable mountain began to sink in. Wow! Who knew?

So... back to the database, which holds the evidence of all I've done with this "guilty time waster" of a career... boy, all the bells and whistles I've been missing out on! All I need to do now is polish it up and figure out why I can't seem to network with my printer. This is going to mean a lot more real estate on my desk... eventually...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

The last time I did a real database was in Access. Had a pretty good one going for my art, but the file got corrupted and when I saw I was going to have to re-create a lot of it I gave up.

I still need to do it!! Bento huh?

Karen Jacobs said...

Whoops! NO! Not Bento! It won't print out reports, of all things! Their forum even discusses this. It makes a beautiful database that I can understand and follow but I gotta have consignment sheets so what good is it?