Hi, have we met?

It took five years of marriage, but I finally worked out today that my missus doesn't understand me at all.

I was failing to render a pencil drawing, when I took a few minutes to express my frustration. I was halfway through explaining to my darling wife how I just couldn't wrap my head around how 'successful' artists can create these photorealistic textures when I can't create any recognizable textures at all, when my missus told me that I annoyed her.

Apparently, I get 'way too obsessive' over things. I'll pick something to be interested in, get completely obsessed with it for a couple of months, then move onto something else and just go round and round in circles.

I looked at her, and it took every bit of self control I have to not hold my hand out and say "Hello, have we met?"

I'm a massive, massive geek… and geekery and obsession go hand in hand.

Yes, I'm obsessive…and like a lot of creative people out there, I know that creativity is a lot like a mental illness. I don't just like to create things…I'm compelled to create things. It's an addiction. That's why over the past five years I've written a ton of short stories, written literally millions of words on three blogs, have tried my hand at painting, drawing, model making, I play guitar, attempted to learn piano, created and ran two podcasts for nearly a year each, got into video effects and advanced photoshop…and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

It's why I want to write a song, learn to play the drums, learn to paint with acrylics, I'd love to try my hand at making some movie quality prop replicas from scratch and I want to write and direct a feature length movie, even if it's only a zero-budget fan film. I want to voice a cartoon character and have my own radio show.

It's why I feel like there's never enough time in the day, even though I have nothing but free time.

To be honest, I don't really think it's my geekiness and obsessiveness she has a problem with. I think it's more to do with me trying to talk to her about whatever my obsession that particular week is. However, this just points out something else she doesn't understand.

When you create something, it isn't really real until you share it. It doesn't matter how good your story is, how amazing your drawing is or how great that song you wrote is if you don't have anyone to show it to.