FINALLY... the maker journal I've always wanted is here!

This has been a summer for the ages for me. Thanks to Prusa I am lucky enough to have one of the best jobs working with the most incredible makers, creators, and businesses ON THE PLANET. This is not hyperbole or brown nosing, its just a fact, I really LOVE what I do. 🧡 I've been to so many events, met so many awesome people, and helped produce / enable so many epic projects with even more on the way. In addition to all of this, my 16yo son has now started working for me, helping out a few days a week as his first summer job. He's gotten a taste of the maker-entrepreneur life and proven himself to be a curious yet effective little worker as well as a creative one. It's been a remarkably reinvigorating and fantastic bonding experience. 

Anyway, the ideas and projects have come WAY faster than my ability to document and share them. This has always been an ongoing struggle for me. I fancy myself a “broad strokes maker,” and by that I mean I usually get a project about 80-90% complete before jumping to the next thing, never fully completing the last of the finish work. The painting, the documentation, the sanding (#PoochDoesntSand), the photos, meh… just never great at those things. I know its not good but I'm always just too eager to hop onto the next thing. I would apparently rather see 50 half finished projects out there than one fully completed one. 🙄Maybe that's because I know projects are never really COMPLETE, at best they're in a temporary state of stasis between iterations. There's always more to be done.

One of the things that always suffers thanks to this habit of mine is creating content and sharing the details of what I've done. Getting set up to record, even short form, always feels like a more ominous task to me than it really is: clean up the recording area, script out what to say, get the lighting right, set up the recording gear, the audio, the editing, etc. However the biggest issue though always seems to be having the energy and will to be “ON” for the camera. I know this is my mind making a mountain out of a molehill but this kind of thing always ends up being the last thing on the to-do list, and by the time I get to it at the end of the day I'm often out of energy… so it rolls infinitely on to the “I'll do it later list." This has more to do with my prioritization of tasks and energy / mental state throughout the day than anything, but when your job is to often help others get the resources they need to create great content, doing your own comes last. Kind of like how the building contractor's house is always the last house that gets worked on, or the web developer's website never progresses beyond the “under construction” state.

Enter Printables Articles

Yes, there are other blogging / journaling platforms out there, but when much of my maker life is centered around 3D printing and the fact that I already spend the time here and love and value this rapidly growing community, it honestly makes perfect sense for this to be my new show and tell space. Why? Well… FRICTION for one… or lack thereof. It's much easier for me to get started when I'm already here experiencing all the platform has to offer. Beyond that I've always appreciated the written word for a multitude of reasons:

1. There's an editorial process: I can jump back and forth massaging content and wordsmithing as I go without having to shoot new takes and re-edit. It's easy for an article to be a “living breathing document” that can change / continuously improve over time.
2. It's easily searchable: I can scan through it quickly, it's discoverable, SEO friendly
3. It's discrete / less invasive to consume than watching video.
4. I can work on it anywhere at pretty much any time: I'm much better at walking and writing than I am walking and recording video…lol
5. It serves as a good first pass at scripting for other types of content (video, podcasting, presentations, etc) If this makes it easier to shoot a video down the road, awesome!
6. It's more contextually robust: I can add photos, videos, links, citations, audio, etc.
7. It feels like it's a dying art in some ways and I enjoy flexing this mental muscle.

My hope is this will actually help empower me to get content out there over time as it breaks the inertia barrier for me a lot. Easy enough to just get started and iterate on it as I go. What do you think? Do you work this way too? Are you a “get your thoughts down on paper first” kind of person too?

Will be interesting to see how this evolves over time and if I can stick with it. I'm optimistic and hopeful that the community here will help keep me motivated to share. Accountability is big for me… we shall see. 👀

Stay tuned for post #2 here shortly outlining some of the random projects I've been working on and wacky images and videos from my summer camera roll that help tell the tale…