Working on my "Or"

The thing about inventing, or creating anything really, is that it’s wonderful. Really wonderful...unless it’s absolute torture.

I’ve found throughout my life that creating new things - useful, silly, wild, pointless, vital, whatever - just making something new that I thought up, or imagined, or created because I thought something needed to be improved on, is what really grounds me. It’s what makes me feel connected, and useful, and more competent than I feel at any other time really.

When I can solve a problem with something in my invention that’s not working, and figure out how to make whatever it was work...it’s everything, it’s joy.

When I can make it work...joy.

Then there’s the part where I’m stuck on the problem and I want to toss the whole thing out, or I want to give up and tinker with the next idea, or I scream (only in my mind, I can’t do that out loud) at the thing and think about smashing it to bits (I don’t...except for that one time). That’s where the torture comes in.

3D Printers, soldering, and thousands of components in labeled drawers – happy place

Sometimes I give in to the urge to dart to the next idea, or another project, like the flighty squirrels that dash about the trees and wires crossing our back yard. Sometimes I keep working on that new idea for what feels like too long. But then, after a break and some thinking time, I go back with new insight, renewed energy, and keep tinkering and tinkering until I solve the problem, or find just the right component, or 3D print the right part, or design just the right mechanism with just the right motion to make the thing work.

Making circuit boards

And there it is - the whatever I created. Solving problems step by step, keeping at it, tinkering until the thing works and keeps working, whether it’s something desperately useful, or silly, or fun, or beautiful to watch. This is what keeps me going.

Make Room

So, we rearranged the house to create a lab in the spare room, instead of out in the little studio at the bottom of the yard. I needed to make space, literal, actual space - and space in the metaphorical sense - in my life for the thing that has always given me the most meaning.

The closer proximity makes it easier to work on and harder to ignore. It is immediate and accessible, as all vital parts of life should be.

Now I can tinker whenever I have time - keep my projects moving forward and get that satisfying thrill of solving the problems, taking those steps toward creating something new. I can set a part to print and jog down down the hall to check the progress instead of running outside in the cold damp, first thing in the morning, to discover the printer’s shut down in the middle of the night with the part mysteriously only half printed.

I can be an inventor every day, which is what I’ve always been regardless of my job title, and remind myself why I’m doing all the rest of this.

I’m keeping a journal, that I’ll be posting here now and then, of how it’s going building my latest invention. The fun and discovery, the frustration, the squirreling ideas, and the step-after-step until I get to the joy of my creation actually doing what I want, designed, and built it to do.