magistrate

I was watching a YouTube video of a guy installing an antique hand pump well, and at one point he mentioned "I'm not sure exactly how to do this, but I'll figure it out as I go along." And I was like, "Man, if that were me, I would have researched the shit out of it before I got started."

Later, one of my housemates was trying to work out why our washer seemed unbalanced when it ran, when the washer itself was level and the drum wasn't offkilter. She was down on the floor examining the undercarriage with a flashlight, and my second or third thought was "Man, if I'd ruled out the obvious causes, I feel like my next stop would be some exhaustive internet research." And then I was like "I feel like I have this thought a lot. Maybe I just really like researching things."

And then I paused, and I was like "...oh. Wait. That... explains a lot."

I am the sort of person who really misses physical dictionaries because 20% of the satisfaction of looking up a word is in learning what it means, and the other 80% is the friends we made along the way discovering new words as one pages through looking for the word I'm actually looking up.

The computer game that's been soaking up my time lately – Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead – is one where I tend to tell interested friends that it's the sort of game where you have to be able to enjoy playing it with reference material open for the first many hours, so you can look up things including but not limited to crafting recipes, early-game strategies, skill prerequisites and implications, dozens of hotkeys, and basic game mechanics.

One of the things that chuffs me the most about my ridiculously huge incomplete RDR2 fic is the fact that I spent so much time researching horse behavior and riding/training interactions that multiple equestrians have assumed that I'm also an equestrian. (I have ridden a horse once. As a touristy thing. That is the extend of my IRL interactions with horses.)

I yesterday spent a considerable amount of time learning about 1800s "portable soup" in support of a braintic I most likely will never write, and will most likely never share with anyone if I do. Also, at least an hour reading reviews of equipment I will most likely never purchase, because I like knowing things.

I just... do genuinely enjoy seeking out information. I'm not going to claim that I'm particularly skilled at it – at least, no more than any other denizen of the internet – but the fact that it's an actual source of pleasure or engagement is a fact about myself which has been largely subliminal until now.

Maybe I should have gone into library science.