Confidence + Knowledge

I was watching Aliens on the weekend - great movie - and thought about how Ripley counterpointed with the arrogant team of marines. (This will make no sense unless you've seen the film)

Ripley had knowledge, but at first no confidence - just nightmares. The marines had bucketsfull of confidence, but no knowledge, and, come to think of it, little wisdom!

As I watched I thought about my approach to life. I tend to put a lot of stock in knowledge, because in the past I've been burned through lack of it.

Particularly in my mind was the Crossover experience - an experience that played out partly on these pages - which was simultaneously the best and worst experience of 2005.

But a lot of the problem with me was lack of knowledge. I was suddenly a co-producer of an independent film, with zero knowledge of how things worked. There were so many reasons why I got out of the project, and why it eventually aborted, but in hindsight my lack of knowledge made it nearly impossible to play my part.

It's actually good to go through that sort of experience - once. It shows you how much you need to learn.

However, there's a point where you know as much as you can know without doing stuff. It's like a chemical reaction - you need just the right amount of element A (knowledge) and element b (confidence), and you get an explosion! (A good one)

So, just like Ripley was able to put her first-person knowledge of the Alien to work, gathering confidence but not cockiness, so I am aiming to put the hard-learned lessons of 2005 - and the continually growing knowledge of 2006 - into action, in controlled, well-planned bits.