Editing DIY

Dear dears: I'm editing my short movie myself. At the beginning I was totally panicked because me and technology are in shaky terms, like two clumsy dance partners who keep stepping in each other's toes. But after three days pushing cursors and cutting footage, I am loving it, even though I get into major problems that then I don't really know how to extricate myself from. Yesterday a wonderful solution was found for my floundering. Set the program at 99 undo commands. It's the only way.
Editing is fun. It is also somehow beautiful. It is playful and exciting, requires mechanical skill but also much more than that. The intangibles of knowing when to start and end a scene; what makes something funnier or more dramatic; what makes the story move at a good clip. You can change the tone and meaning of a scene just by cutting off some frames. You can make an actor's reaction more powerful by choosing just to show the meat of it. I know this may be obvious, but it is a wonderful discovery to do it yourself with your own little fingerinos.