Starting...

Let me describe a scenario—I have an idea for something new. I think about what's involved in getting started, what do I need to assemble, what skills are needed to get up and running and maintain the idea/project, what raw material will this endeavor require? In other words, I plan. Often I get overwhelmed by planning and the details. I try to figure out as much as possible so when I finally begin the new idea, I think very little is left to chance.

I go through this process fairly frequently, especially when I'm rounding a corner on or finishing something else. While working on a current project, I start thinking of new ones. What else could I be doing? Should I be doing? For me, the allure of starting something new is more appealing than my perceived tedium of keeping something already in motion moving. But, it is generally easier to continue work-in-progress than to begin anew. Actually starting, not the planning, is my great leap.

So here I am at the start.

Where to start

I love researching the how and what of putting together a new idea or project. The more technical and modular the better. Each new idea extends or scratches an itch triggered by an ongoing project. Even when making a hard creative or technical pivot, new projects build on ideas, content, infrastructure, or technical knowledge I'm already working on.

The new project ideas that really stick with me are those that are inventions—using novel approaches and tools to build something new. I'll note here again the tension between planning and starting. That said, I love researching how and what. What pieces are needed and how could they fit together? What new skills or tools will be required? How (and why) is thisdifferent from what has been done before? All of these details inspire and conspire against a new start.

Note: while I am writing this I am simultaneously researching a bare bones static website builder for a friend who needs a new website quick.

Even though I prefer the physical constraints of building something, framing ideas and establishing context is important to me, too. I read a lot of newsletters that help me discover new thinking and relationships. I love learning of new people who are actively working and reframing how and what we see and do. Each new connection is its own beginning.

What to start

I'm not a list maker, but here is my current mental arrangement of things I'd like to start.

• A newsletter / journal that forces me to write
• An index of all the new products I try tentatively know as MBTTTOAWATSYDHT (Mark buys things tries them out and writes about them so you don't have to)
• Capture, produce, and distribute photographs
• Design a hypothetical lake house
• Build small, specific online communities
• Indigenous small language models
• Compose and record music
• Various interior renovations on our 1927 bungalow
• Studio cleanup and tactical renovation
• Promote and market our design studio
• Index and catalog my 25 years of design and teaching work
• Help others unGoogle and decouple from omnipresent web services
• Read

How to start

The biggest secret I know about making is that the best way to start it to just start anything. And I mean anything. Don't be afraid of being bad at it or whether anything fruitful will come from the new beginning. Doing fosters more doing which promotes connection and cognition. I've also found that the more starts I have going at once the more I make connections and float between interests.

For me, starting requires a leap. After all the research there's a moment where I finally hold my breath and begin. Where I end up doesn't matter right then. Another fuse is lit. I am doing.

What is this newsletter?

Truthfully, I'm not sure. But it for sure is a start of something. I began writing this piece feeling directionless and stuck. But now that it's written I have some oomph to write again.

Will this be about creative process? Ethnical technology practices? Tutorials? Humor? Railfanning? Figuring out what a creative something is takes time. And beginning can be the hardest part, especially if it's something new to you.

I suspect I will continue to revisit writing about what this newsletter/journal is and is not about. Every time I (re)write gives it a some more shape. Direction.

I've started something new and I wanted to share it with you. And you are on the mailing list because I hope you'll enjoy reading and ultimately find value in this writing. If you do or want to add you 2 cents, please sign up for a free account and comment

Onward.

New-to-me Idea

"facultative mutualism: a form of symbiosis on which neither interactive species is dependent, yet which benefits both."

~via The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard (©2021 and published by Penguin Books)

New-to-me Thing

Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. It's an open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network