Build It

Building requires work and planning.

Building a building takes an architect, and blueprints, and construction teams, and hundreds of other things that I don't know about, because I wear glasses and use a computer keyboard, instead of a hardhat and a shovel.

Making a cake takes a recipe (or some plan, at least), ingredients, an oven, and some previous knowledge about baking (don't put the egg shells in, mix it enough or not too much).

Building a relationship takes time, and energy, and sacrifice. Friends don't become friends overnight, and once they get there it's still work. 

Making a story means creating characters, formulating plot, setting the stage. It doesn't happen without a fair amount of thinking and planning.

Sports teams don't become champions overnight, an ice rink doesn't freeze in one minute, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Putting the work into building something is worth it. It is an accomplishment, and achievement, an exercise of will. Sometimes there is a reward for completion, but often, finishing is its own reward. It is the ability to step back and say, "I made this," and to recognize that perceived value aside, it is good because you made it.

Build with the value of the finished product in mind. It's worth it.

Short

Get carried away by creating.

Sunday Fabulous

Sleeping later than the weekdays.Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Fall colors raging rampant. An entire afternoon with nothing to do but exist and be together. Bursting organ (instrumental, not anatomical) choruses. Sunday best. Out for walks. Resting. Reading. Eating whatever whenever. Afternoon naps. No responsibilities or obligations. Sunday dinner. Ice cream. Fruit pie.

All the things that make Sunday fabulous.

The Real Thing

People love a good reason to celebrate (see Cubs victory this week; it shouldn't be hard, it's the only thing everyone's been talking about since Wednesday night.).

Even more than that, people love to talk about what they've seen and celebrated—it's something that defines us as humans, being able to chronicle what we've done and been through. It goes back to the very beginning of time. Before people just wrote things down or took a picture, civilization passed down story from generation to generation, to preserve the history of who they'd become out of who they'd been. It comes from the deep desire to know and be known, and it is who we are.

Now, it's different. It's the wireless age, and we share where we are and what we're doing immediately. While this is an amazing way to communicate and share information, it's also harder to remember to experience the real thing first hand. It's important to feel the real-ness of life, because while the virtual can be pretty amazing, the real is, well. Real. And nothing is as good as experiencing real life while it's happening.

So take pictures, and videos, and write things down. All of that is great.

But also hold your phone out to the side, or over your head, or right up close to your chest, and watch what happens with your eyes—because no one else's picture or video or blog or article can tell the story of what you saw quite like you can, with your mouth and your expressions and your hand motions.

Scribbled Insights

I have a lot of scraps of paper taped up around my desk, full of scribbled insights. I've gathered them through the months, and put them up to remind myself of the things that are important in life: making wise choices, loving people, living for God. One of them says, "Our default assumption is that people who choose their words carefully are quite smart."

It needs no explanation, and lines up with a proverb.

"Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Also self-explanatory.

When you're in a creating position, think carefully about what you say and make. It pays off in the long run.

Go Cubs, Go

All of Chicago stayed awake till the small hours of the morning last night, nail-biting, rocking back and forth on seats and couches and stadium chairs, shivering in the cold outside of Wrigley Field, being hurled from the heights of delight to the depths of woe, watching pitch after agonizing pitch of one of the closest and most torturous games that's been in the World Series. Ever (there are likely statistics to refine or contest the truth of this statement, but if you don't believe me, just ask anyone who saw the game). And after all the tension, and drama, and a 17 minute rain delay that gave everyone (by which I mean the Cubs) time to refocus and regroup, and an extra inning that turned plenty of heads gray, the Cubs won.

Chicago went wild.

History in the making, and that is all I have to say about that.

The Impressions

Sometimes it's really hard to put more than two words together and come up with something meaningful. The self-imposed pressure to do something that matters takes a deadly toll on already feeble inspiration, and it's gloomy and raining outside and I don't want to walk home to lunch. This morning I ran to then on a track. As soon as I got there, I saw the old man running back and forth, about a half length of one of the long sides of the track. I would round the last curve of the track, and he would be running towards me full speed (for him, at least), teetering on his old legs, swaying back and forth at a mesmerizing (and concerning) pitch. As I got closer I started to move over on the track so we wouldn't collide, but right before I reached him he abruptly turned around and ran the other way. I passed him and kept going, and the scenario repeated itself as many times as I circled the track.

I spent my run thankful that my knees didn't hurt, and thinking about why that man, who had the whole track to run around, was using only a tiny section. I saw the bicycle on my first lap around, but didn't put it together until the third or fourth lap. He was running that short piece of track to babysit his bike, which was standing tall and proud on a kickstand next to the fence. And he had a bike lock on his bike, unused, and a coat draped over it, like the covering of a proud and chilly racehorse.

He was running his short laps to watch his bike, and although I tend to shy away from philosophics (which is not a real word), I wondered why he wasn't using the lock, instead running 30 yards back and forth to watch it. Maybe the dark had something to do with it, maybe it was an expensive bike (I didn't stop to look at it, after all, he was right there), maybe it was actually a trap and he wasn't as feeble as he appeared to be, maybe it wasn't his bike at all and he just really likes running 40 paces back and forth. And back and forth. And back and forth. And back and... You get it.

It really doesn't matter very much, but it made an impression on me, and hours later, I'm sitting at my desk, glad that the rain didn't ruin my shoes on my walk home for lunch, and thinking about that guy who just kept running back and forth.

Write about what makes an impression on you. Maybe someday you'll realize it mattered more than you thought.

Don't Copy This

There's currently a case in the Supreme Court about... Cheerleader uniforms. According to columnist Brent Kendall, of the Wall Street Journal,

"In a vigorous debate on Monday, the high court spent an hour considering when the design elements of clothing can be eligible for copyright protection, an issue that required the justices to consider the qualities that make a cheerleading uniform what it is."

I need news condensed into simple terms, so if I asked, here's what's happening: Someone had a great design for a uniform. Someone else duplicated it. The first guy felt like he got ripped off, because he wasn't getting credit or money for his ideas. He was unhappy. Very, very unhappy.

I'm not law-savvy enough to know who is right in this argument. I do know that imitation is "one of the sincerest forms of flattery (see this kid's halloween costume)," but that getting copied feels like a rip off.

While I am a big proponent of seeing something that worked well for someone else, borrowing ideas, and sharing creativity, I recognize that duplicating someone else's work without crediting them is, in loose terms, stealing.

But it's hard to be creative on your own. That's why it's so important to work in unison, to create surrounded by other creative people, to make things that matter for important causes. If someone else does something amazing, share their work. Don't copy it. Use their idea to start your own project, but make it different, make it you, and give them credit for the original.

We go farther together than we go alone.

Hard Work Ain't Easy

It's easy to conceptualize that creating something is a good idea, but when the rubber meets the road and the tires are flat, all we can see is disaster. By nature, we'll always take the easy way out—not necessarily because we're lazy, but because hard work is... well, hard. At the end of the day, however, the easy way out provides an astonishingly low level of satisfaction: nothing accomplished, nothing won, a day spent with nothing to show for it. That's a lot of nothing. Working towards something that matters, even though it sometimes feels worthless and excruciatingly painful (don't keep your leg in the bear trap you didn't see just to finish hunting, though), has benefits that long outlast putzing around, doing nothing but breathing and swallowing. You created. You worked. You know something now that you didn't know before. And you have something to show for it...

It feels a lot better to say, "Here, I made this," than to say, "Well, the garbage truck came at 9, the mail came at 11, the clock fell off the wall at 2:45, and now I'm hungry for dinner. What is it?"

Don't be afraid to do the work it takes to make something that matters.