Sittin’ on the dock of the bay…

I like making things. I get that from my father. We’ve been collaborating on various projects, dating back to the tree house he spent his vacation helping me build when I was twelve.

Here we are, flanking the TV cabinet we’ve been building for the past month and a half. We’ve been getting together once a week or so to work on it, and now it’s just a couple coats of paint from being finished. Soon the cabinet will reside in my living room.

When I first went to my father about this project, I had only a few sketches and some raw materials. Not knowing if he’d have much time to help, I really only hoped to use the tools and workshop in his basement. Working on my own, I probably could have assembled a serviceable TV bench. Working with him, we’ve managed to build a rock-solid, well-trimmed piece of furniture, and for a fraction of what it would have cost to purchase a similar product in a store.

But the real value of what we’ve done isn’t in the quality of the cabinet we’ve built or the money we’ve saved. It’s in the time and experience we’ve shared. It’s in every ounce of his wisdom that finally gets through my skull. And every time we share such an experience, my eyes open a little wider, and I become just a little more aware of what an amazing man my father is.

I have written about Independents Hall (aka, Indy Hall) before. It’s even on my acknowledgments page, along with a few other great people (and organizations) that have played roles in my creative process over the past couple years.

As a member of Indy Hall since the fall of 2010, I’ve been subscribed to their project management site for over a year and a half now. It’s part of my effort to never let my email inbox feel lonely (as if that had been a problem). As a result, I get several new messages a day about the goings on at Indy Hall. Some are mundane, like housekeeping messages; others are momentous, like the announcement of a town hall meeting this past Thursday evening. The town hall was called for Thursday to discuss the proposed expansion of Indy Hall from one floor to two, specifically by taking over the first floor of the Daniels Building on North 3rd Street.

The expansion was spurred not just by growth in membership terms (there’s been a waiting list for non-basic members since last fall), but also by other goals, such as adding classroom space, “team” rooms (for some of the start-ups already calling Indy Hall home), and a more visible street presence. It’s all pretty exciting, and maybe even a little scary, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What gives it real potential, and what has always given Indy Hall potential, is that it’s a community much more than it is a mere business. And everyone who’s already on board has the capacity to shape, fund and benefit from the expansion of an already great community.

There are risks, and not just financial ones. A great community risks losing its personality as it grows, but this community has been quite scalable over the first few years of its existence. I tend to believe the model put into place from the beginning has the capacity to grow without diluting in quality. That speaks not only to the leadership of folks like Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi, but also to the quality of the community that’s been cultivated and outfitted with a tremendous knack for self-adjustment.

Anyway, I’m excited about it, and I’m far from the only one.

This is the first line in a poem I wrote 8 years ago.

There’s a lot of pain and dysfunction in the world. Billions of broken people. Healing and growth are so much easier when we don’t pile guilt and shame on top of everything else. We’ve all been broken, no matter how well some of us hide it. No one has it all figured out.

I just wish more people realized that, especially those who drag themselves down by comparing their insides to someone else’s outsides.

The original version of the poem is below:

(more…)

While I was pleased last fall with the release of Natural Lines in print, I knew more than a few interested folks who wouldn’t be comfortable with the cost of a full-color print edition. This conflicted with my original desire to share the collection with as many interested folks as possible. So I knew I would have to digitize the book.

The first step toward digitizing the book was to create naturallines.analogimpulse.net, which hosts an interactive gallery of items from the original book.

The second step is Natural Lines Digital Edition. The digital edition is in PDF format and offers all the content of the original version with a slightly inverted sense of style.

You can download it now and contribute whatever you wish. You can even download it, take it for a spin and figure out what it’s worth to you. I won’t mind.

Click here for the download page.