Obsession (Noun) Fixation; Consumption With Desire, Belief

As I look back on life, I pinpoint my obsessions along the path. Boys were the first one--the desire for a life partner and mate preoccupying my late teens and earliest twenties. It took many years to complete that goal and many more to grow into deserving him. But this post is not about that that kind of lust.

While I was waiting to meet my heart's desire, I became involved with glass--first stained then fused--and hot on its heels of glass was linguistics. One thing led to another, personality and politics decreed my path would not be smooth, and when I transitioned from professional lingistics/university faculty into academic computing support, I stumbled upon the Remedy software application. Learning it led to my most successful--by the standards of our society--professional activity, and still to this day (over 20 years later) it remains one of the most satisfying and challenging pursuits I have undertaken.

Now I am in the middle of another infatuation (the garden and all things botanical) and I find myself needing to return to my Remedy roots (in a way) as I pick up and learn the current version of FileMaker Pro in order to compile a flexible database of the native plants I am using in the new garden that will hold all the data I want to gather about them in a way that is accessible. In other words, I have reached the limit of what I can efficiently manage with Microsoft Excel. When it is finished, I hope to transition this database to data.world--thereby marrying both my and my husband's passions--and make it available to others. As I go, I marvel at how life winds around and flows, twining and crossing the paths of the past and the present, forming us into the solid, complex, three-dimensional organisms that we are. Who knew that software/workflow development would lend itself to gardening?

Do not think this means I have forgotten glass, spinning, weaving, ceramics, metal-smithing, woodworking, and ikebana--all past and present preoccupations. But today, tonight, I create cathedrals in software. And I help Baxter walk to and from the front door. We are off to the vet tomorrow morning--I have a feeling the next post will be about him.