Get to the Garage

Last fall, I cleared out some physical space in our house, bought a new desk, moved equipment, and created a fully-functional lab in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall. I thought removing the physical distance between my everyday routine and lab equipment would make it easier to get back to working on my personal projects, my inventions, when I’m not at work-work. With all the critical pieces just at the end of the hall, I could have more time to tweak, experiment, and push my personal projects ahead faster.

The results are mixed - equal parts enlightening and a bit disconcerting.

While the lack of physical separation has made it easier to do certain things, such as monitor and iterate a 3D print - which is now a short jog down the hall rather than a dash across the cold, sometimes soggy, lawn - it has had unintended consequences as well.

For example, I’ve discovered that the physical distance of the lab was a very comforting excuse for not having the space in my life to actually get into the lab. Only now it lurks at the end of the hall, close physically but still miles away from where I need to be mentally, yet it’s sometimes still difficult to make the slog. Instead of explaining to myself that I don’t have the wherewithal to get down to the lab at the bottom of the garden, there’s a black doorway, with accusatory lights blinking on the other side. Instead of overwhelmed, I find myself feeling guilty because it’s just...right there.

Time off over the holidays cut through the guilt and mental barriers like a laser. Or finally having the space and time to let go of the mental load imposed by my job and family obligations allowed me to start thinking about my actual lasers again, and gave me some new perspective on the issue (See what I did there? Lasers. What a geek).

The paneling didn’t warm it up much - so we put on jackets and worked fast to keep warm

I found myself thinking back, all those years ago, when I was running my first solo venture, a video game company, out of my parent’s garage. My friends would all get together and we’d bounce crazy ideas off each other, and then we’d just go make this absolutely cool stuff. That freezing, damp, admittedly homely space produced some wild ideas and fantastic tech.

What we thought up, designed, and created in that little garage is what lead to my job in America, and eventually got me to where I am now.

Virtual Time Machine

I want to go back to that garage.

I’m not saying I want to fly back to central, overcast, countryside England and literally work in an old garage. I’m sure it’s still as cold, and damp, and musty as it was three decades ago. It’s the feeling of the garage I want to recapture.

The garage in its native environment

The excitement of creative collaboration. The room to dream up impossible things and find a way to make them possible. The space to iterate and work out problems without worrying about the next meeting coming up, or the small challenges and big problems that fill and define everyday life.

How do I do it? Where do I start? How can I recapture that feeling of freedom, or mental flexibility, possibility, excitement, and time?

Where is your garage? How do you get there? Not to the moment of discovery or the first spark of an idea, but the will and drive to keep going back, doggedly, with dedication and enthusiasm, day after day. To just keep on doing the hard, tedious, incremental slog that leads to real creation?

How and in what mental space do you make yourself Dyson and his 5,000 prototypes, or Edison and his 10,000 light bulbs (though I’ve always been more of a Tesla fan - the inventor, not the cars)? How do you make the mental space to keep that bit of garage alive and humming so you can keep creating?

I need to find it - that way to mentally slog across the lawn, or jog down the hall, away from the noise of everyday life, shut the door, be in the garage space that lives within me, and get to work.