Very cool!! I admire your creativity and perseverance.
The anger issue is something many of us deal with in life. I was constantly criticized and often humiliated for small things growing up, and it led to lots of self-criticism and hearing those ‘voices’ of criticism in my head every time I made a mistake - even as an adult. I’m over that, mostly, but it was an inner voice I had to learn to ignore.
I sometimes think it is a matter of being able to forgive yourself when you fail to meet your own expectations.
I had a lot of that-nothing ever came easy to me (mentally speaking) and I always felt I had to work twice as hard to be as good as someone who may not even have been all that great at whatever it was.
Professionally, this has been helpful to me. I had a former Vice President at the place I work come to a relative’s funeral (he left us and went to work at my brother in law’s place...actually took his job when he retired...small world) and I was surprised to see him there.
I always had the highest degree of respect for him for a variety of reasons, so it was a nice surprise to see him.
In front of a whole group of people talking at the funeral, with everyone listening, he said: “I always hesitated to ask you do do something in a short time frame, because I knew you would go to nearly any length to get it done and would just about kill yourself to do it. You are one of the hardest working people I have ever met.”
I have to tell you...coming from that man, that was high praise indeed, and it was very hard not to let that go right to my head...okay, well it did, I guess.
The point is, I feel like I have strengths and weaknesses, I don’t always see things right away, and I have to have things repeated in different ways until I grasp them fully sometimes, and then I have to make a bunch of mistakes, but the one God-given thing I have that has helped me get past that is downright stubbornness and a work ethic I got from my Dad.
So, as I worked on this printer as a hobby, month after month, I lost my temper a bunch of times. But many more times, I also was able to put it down, walk away without letting it control me, and come back to fight it another day.
I regard that as a victory. And from reading your post, I think you would too in that situation!