Arien vs. The World

A couple of days ago I was reading one of my favorite sites and I saw someone requesting feedback for an idea. As I read it I was thinking, “this can’t be happening!”. I had the exact same idea a couple of months ago!

It’s not really the first time that I have one idea and I find it already exposed (or even executed) after doing some research. I mean, it’s rather hard to come up with something that nobody thought about before, isn’t it? So many brains thinking at the same time, it’s bound to happen… So, I wasn’t surprised by it that much. The shock came because the line of thinking we both had was actually the same, almost word by word. You can approach this idea in many, many ways, because it’s really simple, but he took exactly the one I did.

Right after reading his message I felt like something had been stolen from me, and I don’t mean the idea itself (OK maybe I do, but just a tiny bit), but the excitement about it. But at the same time I felt happy to see that someone other than me had the same necessity that made me think of it, because it meant it really was a useful idea. Disappointment and reassurance. I was kind of stunned for a few minutes, thinking about this issue and about how I reacted (I swear I should have studied psychology, human reactions are just too amusing, specially my own).

I was really curious about what he exactly had in mind, so I wrote to him so we could talk about it some time. As I said, I had this idea a couple of months ago and thought it would be very useful. I tried to find something similar but there was really nothing out there. So I wrote the specs of the idea and put it in my “ideas box”(tm), as usual. I asked around and didn’t get too good feedback, so the idea remained on the box for the last two months. Until I read this message. After the initial mixed feelings I’m inspired again to work on it.

Now I wonder, how long will the inspiration last? But I know the answer already. Right until another brilliant idea crosses my mind and makes me think this is a silly waste of time compared to it. And at the rate I come up with new ideas, I probably have about half day left… SIGH!