My first favorite computer-related pastime involved "making pictures," as we said in my Upper Midwestern '70s childhood. Initially, it was crayon-coloring on the punch-cards Mom brought home from work. Then, in the early '80s, it was making Christmas trees with *s for the foliage and @s for the ornaments and ||s for the trunk and so on. One of my first software purchases was a shareware drawing program (on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies) for my 8088 in the early '90s.
So there's more than a bit of irony in the fact that graphics programs in the '00s intimidate the living daylights out of me.
Nevertheless, I've achieved enough detente with The Gimp that tonight I'm more or less capably massaging freeware images for the final project of my games programming class. It's boring as all get-out. But that's okay--it's been a more-stressful-than-usual day at work, and the tedium is actually kind of soothing. I can do just enough of it on auto-pilot that the major design aspects of the game will stay at a slow simmer on the proverbial back burner in the meanwhile.
And, via this navel-gazing route, I come to a point where I wonder why people (who can afford it) reflexively outsource drudgery. Sure, I could afford to pay a graphic artist, but tonight I'm in a head-space where I can coast without What-I-Should-Be-Doing looming in my rear view mirror. That's a luxury of sorts. I think I remember Agatha Christie writing that the best time for "plotting" was when she was doing the dishes. I can appreciate the sentiment.
So the takeaway tuppence I'll offer is this: Save enough drudgery for yourself. I believe that, nine times of ten, you'll actually be more efficient in the long run.
