Happiness

I am many things; parent, husband, friend, teacher, Cub leader, atheist.

I am also, threaded through all of these, a Maker.

Since making the decision to leave work in May, I've had a small splurge of Making and publishing. There's no real theme, I've just been enjoying myself whilst occupying my hands.

This may seem like small news, but there's a difference. I'm happy.

I have no income, and my wife currently has very little income, which means my family is at risk of homelessness, yet I am genuinely happy.

I've been unemployed before, and last time the experience was a genuinely damaging experience. It strained our marriage, it cost us our home.

This time, though, I am happy.

So, what's different? I have a larger mortgage than the first time, I gave two sons to look after, so I should be under greater pressure. I should be a screaming wreck in the corner, but I'm not.

The answer is that I am now a Maker.

If you follow my work, you may have noticed that most of my projects involve very little in the way of investment. OK, if there's a laser cutter handy, I'll use it, but most of my work, even the laser cut stuff, can be reproduced with ordinary hand tools. The special thing, for me, is not the grandness of the Made thing, but the act of Making itself, including the sharing with a wider audience.

Making is an expression of my Humanity. We're the tool using, story-telling ape, and publishing an instructable is, to me, one of the things that makes me "me".

Deny me access to tools, and you deny me my identity.

All of which is a (very) long-winded run up to the current situation.

Whenever I publish an instructable, I usually enter it in whatever contests are running and appropriate, but then I forget about it. The contests don't usually mean anything to me, byt this time it's different. I actually think I have a (small) chance of winning something.

Who knows,  maybe even a laser cutter, but something.

And that's exciting.

Now, if you've cared enough to read as far as this, I have favour to ask: go to my page, look at my projects, and vote for those you care to.

Thank you.

I'm going back to being happy now.

Day One

Right, I've done my first full-ish day at the Lab.

It was AWESOME!

What happened...?

• I met lots of seriously cool people.  I missed most of their names, but that's me - I'll probably get everybody straight by the time I leave.
• I got my "base" - I'm between the Editorial Team and the Big Silver Table of Working, Meeting and Eating, Often Simultaneously.
• We had a mass meal of "Super Duper" burgers, salad, fruit, and chocolate cheesecake to say goodbye to Matt D, who's going back to "school".
• I spent a chunk of time reading and judging the finalists in a contest.
• I found out something of how the site works behind the scenes - I didn't really grok how much work goes on in this happy family to make the site trundle on.  Certain folk complain that the staff don't listen to feedback, but I can tell you from the HQ side side of the monitor that most of what gets talked about is what the members are doing and saying.
• Matt gave me a tour of the office, Jessy gave me a tour of the other sites and workshops linked to Instructables (ohhh, toys!), and we spent some time drooling over the very high-end 3D products on display at the AutoDesk building (they're open to public view on Wednesday afternoons - I recommend it).
• I did two other useful things (apart from the judging).  One, I robotified my new mobile cell phone (Kitewife bought two identical cheap handsets so we can stay in touch, just in case), the other is remaining secret - I want to see if the rest of the guys notice that it happened...
• With the family, I went to look at the Bay, saw a flock of parakeets overhead (unfortunately in silhouette, so I don't know what kind they were), didn't see the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog.

There was some paperwork stuff as well, but that was boring...

Oh, I also decided what to do as my first proper project tomorrow...

Incredible News!

I needed a kick to restart the blog, and here it is...

It's not a secret, but you may, dear reader, have missed the biggest news since I got a new job:

I am going to America!

Yes, dear reader, yours truly has been invited to be "Artist in Residence" at Instructables!

The entire Kitefamily will be spending the whole of August 2012 in San Francisco, "working" alongside the staff, on whatever projects I like!

If you do not know me, it is hard to express the significance of this event.  It's lottery-win excitement.  It's a soap-box racer being invited to join an F1 team, a bedroom musician getting the half-time gig at the Superbowl.

After I got the invitation, I grinned so much I actually got cramp in my cheeks!

Now, the plane tickets are booked, I've put a deposit down on an apartment for the month, and our visas are sorted.

I promise, as things move on, I will keep y'all updated.

GRIN

Milestone coming

Quick post: I've just noticed that I have 690 subscribers. I need to make another milestone patch...