master of none

Lately I've been feeling like I want to commit.  I've always been a sort of jack-of-all-trades, mostly out of my desire to DIY things I felt like I could make rather than buy, out of frugality.  So instead of hiring out certain things, or buying stuff, I'd do it myself.  I figured I could figure it out and it'd turn out just as good.  And everything I DIY tends to turn out nicely, but because of that I've never focused myself.  I've never chosen to set my sights on one thing that I want to really excel at and commit to becoming proficient in that.  And at this point, I'm really desiring to narrow my sights.  To weed out things that I don't want to commit to and focus on something I'd like to become really good at.  I suppose that's what college is kind of supposed to do.  You major in one thing and focus on that.

Something that probably made me take notice of this, in a more obvious way, is our home exterior renovation.  Since we're doing it ourselves, we're definitely saving money, but I have almost no time to do anything else.  So we're saving money, but if we paid someone to do it, we'd be spending more money, but saving time.  And they say that time=money.  Most of my "do-it-yourself-ing" isn't as huge as that project, but if I extrapolate all those little DIY things, I can tell that the time I'm losing to being a jack of all trades is keeping me from focusing on important things and doing them well.

dress/courtesy of mata traders :: boots/courtesy of blowfish :: hat/nordstrom

jacket/courtesy of asianicandy :: belt + scarf/thrifted

In a lot of ways, I feel like my frugality is to blame.  I don't want to buy books or invest in classes and courses because I figure I can figure it out myself, or find free resources online.  In some instances, this makes sense, but in a lot of ways, investing in learning from someone else is more cost effective.  And I think my pride is to blame as well.  There's a certain pride that comes from being like, "oh, I'm self-taught."  But if my progress is being stunted because I'm hell bent on telling people I taught myself, rather than fast tracking my progress by learning from an expert, that's just idiocy on my part.  There are a few things that I really want to become better at, and taking classes or investing in resources is worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge advocate for DIY, and will continue to DIY a lot of stuff in my life, mostly because it's not only cheaper but less work (ex: cutting my own hair).  There are a lot of things that we think are difficult because we can buy them, so we figure they're probably too hard to figure out, which often isn't the case.  But I'm going to try and evaluate which things are going to limit my time doing stuff I really want to focus on, and which things are still logical to continue DIYing.  I absolutely love doing things myself, when it makes sense, and before I feel like I used to push to do as much as physically possible myself, which is kind of awesome, but at the same time I think it could come from a selfish and/or prideful place of wanting to be able to say that I did everything myself.  As I get older, I think it will be important to prioritize which things are good to do myself, and which things are best left to outsourcing.