Addicted to Learning

This cookie takes 45 minutes to decorate — and that is not
 including making the dough,baking the cookie, making the
icing and laying down the red flood layer. 

What drives me? What do I want? What am I after? Is it happiness I seek? I notice that when something breaks or goes missing, I feel compelled to fix or replace it immediately so "everything gets back to normal." It's as if stasis is what I seek. So is my life truly just about keeping things working; keeping things the same? Am I born to maintain my self-determined status quo?

Why do I look at real estate ads? Why do I tell people I am restless? What do I mean? What is "restless?" I conclude it's stimulation I seek.

And why am I compelled to write? Why do I always need a project? Is the answer "stimulation" again?

Yesterday, writing my previous post gave me deeper insight. It isn't stimulation I am addicted to, it is learning. I had never before realized that I was technically unqualified to do all the work I have done. I had noticed when personal computers revolutionized our lives that I could not read a word of the manuals. I always hired someone to teach me how to use new software.

I am addicted to experiential learning. That is my truth. And today I am going to go out in the pouring rain (and on a Saturday before Christmas, an anathema) to get all the supplies I need to bake some perfectly shaped, perfectly even-textured large cookies on which I am going to practice Royal Icing Wet-on-Wet and Wet-on-Dry techniques — but not as crazy complicated as the ones above. Look at those reindeer! Are they not ridiculous? But it is those poinsettias that kill. Those lines between the leaves cause migraines! They are drawn with a needle-like stylus.