So I learned a new word this morning.
Neep
nēp/
noun
SCOTTISHNORTHERN ENGLISH
a turnip
I learned it playing Words With Friends, with my wife. Every so often I'll engage in an online scrabble tactic which podcaster John Hodgman disdains and has named "spamming the engine."
That's when you play a word which might be a word, kind of looks like a word, and, penalty-free, can be checked for actual validity as you play it.
Regardless of Hodgman's disdain, it's an approach to learning new things which is actually pretty good.
My brother Spacey is fond of saying that people often vastly overestimate the potential negatives of taking risks, of putting one's neck out there.
I totally see this.
I'm in a similar neep-acquisition phase in my vanilla career. I've switched technical disciplines, and know some things really well, and am just learning others.
It can be exciting at times, and really intimidating at other times. Today I've got something like that ahead of me. I'm learning a new skill, that I have a succinct high level understanding of already, but have never done before. I'm both excited and nervous about it.
I think I'm going to start referring to this seat-of-the-pants skills acquisition as "neep farming" from now on.
I'm grateful for it.