Are you a quilting geek?

This morning when I opened G+, the first thing I saw was a definition of a “geek”. And based on this definition, there are literally millions of quilting geeks. This definition described my feelings about quilting perfectly. And I suspect the authors never even thought about quilters. Tell me what you think.

Here’s the definition the Explore blog quoted from Joe Hanson:

“Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your level of enthusiasm measures up to others. If you like something so much that a casual mention of it makes your whole being light up like a halogen lamp, if hearing a stranger fondly mention your favorite book or game is instant grounds for friendship, if you have ever found yourself bouncing out of your chair because something you learned blew your mind so hard that you physically could not contain yourself — you are a geek”

from It’s Okay to Be Smart blog by Joe Hanson

And from there, I found an essay by Becky Chambers from The Mary Sue on What It Means To Be A Geek. Here’s a quote from the essay:

“The thing that all geeks have in common (other than carbon) is not what we are interested in, but how we go about consuming our interests. “Consuming” is the perfect word for it, because geeks are rarely a passive audience. We devour our interests. We are driven to know how things work. It isn’t enough for us just to enjoy something. When something piques our interest or elicits an emotional response from us, we have to know why. We have to dissect it, put it under a microscope, and come to understand it on a molecular level. This mental process is the same, regardless of whether we are talking about breaking down narrative structure or sequencing a genome or designing a costume. The impulse to engage with the world in this fashion comes to us instinctively, and allowing ourselves to explore makes us excited. Since a feeling of excitement is initially what spurred us to dig deeper, this means that our interests drive us into this wonderful cycle of bliss in which every detail we uncover makes us even more stoked about the thing that got us so stoked in the first place. The more details there are, the happier we become. This is why we love things like DVD commentaries and roleplaying rulebooks and insanely intricate fanart. We enjoy seeing things that were made by like-minded people. We like making things that require us to be meticulous. We like using our brains, and we like to interact with other people who like using their brains, even if we don’t use our brains for the same things. We can remain interested in a topic or story for decades, even for our whole lives, so long as the details remain enticing. Once we run out of details, we get bored. But that’s okay. There are always new things to get interested in. You will be hard-pressed to find a geek who isn’t currently obsessing over something.

We are, perhaps, the most enthusiastic people on the planet.”

from Essay on What It Means To Be A Geek by Becky Chambers

3 Replies to “Are you a quilting geek?”

  1. I am a self professed geek. When I dive into something I dive in wholeheartedly. I am almost obsessed. If you are familiar with the television show “Big Bang Theory” I am almost Sheldon.

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