All Those Little Details!

Back when I had a "real job" in the outside world, one of my greatest strengths — at least according to me — was my attention to detail, and to getting things (projects) done right.

Truth be known, my employers didn’t necessarily see it as a strength because being mindful of all the little details tends to be fairly time consuming... and quick solutions were often considered more important than great ones.

I have a feeling that I was born with this "detail gene," because it mattered to me even when I was a kid.

I remember my dad coming home from the factory (they manufactured bottle caps, like you see on beer bottles) one day and he was furious because a couple of metal sheets had been fed through the presses backwards, resulting in the brand logo being cut in half on about 1,000 bottle caps during the afternoon's production on one of the lines.

His anger was due to the fact that they would have to throw away maybe 18-20 boxes of finished product, representing the time the mis-stamped caps went through the production line... quite a sizeable loss... 99,000 good bottle caps, and 1,000 defective, mixed together.

At the tender age of 10, I said "I'll sort them!"

And so I did, finding all 1,024 miscut caps... saving the company (at the time) about $2,000 in 1970 dollars.

Everyone was pretty amazed that a kid was able to focus and undertake a sorting task that no adult had offered to take on. Of course, my dad also could get away with paying me a fraction of what a factory worker would have been paid... but I still just had fun doing it.

Yeah, my idea of "fun" is a bit twisted...

Anyway, it was attention to detail that much later got me into the editing and proofreading field... a way for me to combine attention to detail with my love of the written word.

It also was central to my making a business of trading old paper collectibles and rare stamps, and to my beachcombing business which was heavily dependent on accurate grading and my ability to match colors and tell apart colors that were just a tiny nuance different from each other.

Of course, for the last 15 years or so, I have been applying this particular "talent" to my creative/art endeavor of painting extremely detailed mandalas on beach stones. Perhaps not a particularly useful skill, but definitely something I enjoy doing... and a type of "hyperfocus" that works really well for my ADHD-ish brain.

Which brings me around to the point that simply being gifted and talented at something doesn't necessarily mean it is useful to the world, or even appreciated.

While I really enjoy detail work, I have never been able to convert it into anything particularly functional nor particularly marketable, so I try to find a measure of contentment in detail works simply for its own sake."

You might be tempted to think that attention to detail would be part and parcel of a profession such as proofreading or editing... and that is conditionally true, but most people are honestly only willing to pay you for "good enough" rather than for something that approximates perfection.

One of my painted stones.

I have long since passed the point of being too nitpicky over tiny details... because most people don't actually care.

So it's mostly for my own benefit.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Sunday!

How about YOU? Are you good with tiny details? Or are you more of a "big picture"person? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2025.08.03 02:51 PDT
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