Over the last seven months or so I've been puzzling over the thought of why I've been mucking around with computers for 20+years if it's not what I'm supposed to be doing in the future. The Human Resources stint was pretty easy to explain since that was the first department to get to use computers for something other than data entry and number crunching and the first department to get PCs. Eventually, I did get that job in the IT field that I thought I always wanted, but after I got laid off, I wasn't so sure I wanted to do that anymore. I decided after six months of looking for a job and not finding one that maybe I ought to do something I really wanted to do, something I LOVED to do, but what in the hell do computers have to do dying material or making pottery or all those other things that I think I want to do for a living? Looking back over yesterday's first attempt to dye a shirt I realized that if I hadn't approached the situation in the same way I've approached computing problems then my husband wouldn't be wearing that first hand-dyed T-shirt today. No big Ziploc bags to line the coffee can (per the instructions)? Use a couple of plastic grocery bags - the point is to keep the shirt from touching the metal, not to hold water. No measuring spoons? Use the top off a plastic soda bottle (holds about a teaspoon - close enough.) No glass measuring cup to mix the dye in? Use an old carafe from a coffee maker. No wooden or stainless steel spoon to stir with? Use a stick found on the ground in the backyard. No gloves to keep your hands from getting stained? Decide that having blue hands for a while is not the end of the world. Have absolutely no idea what you are doing, but just a vision of the end result? Figure it out as you go along. THAT is what working with computers has given me: the ability to visualize an end result and aim for it even if you only have the vaguest idea of how to get there and little or none of the "tools" other people think you need.