We often over-specialize. We are quick to define ourselves as different from one another, saying, “This does not apply to me.” Maybe it’s a natural tendency we have evolved to help us manage a complex world. But it’s also a tendency that can impede us from learning from the diverse experiences of others that might not seem relevant on the surface, but upon closer examination reveal insight that can add to our own experience.
I guess I am a generalist by nature, excited by the similarities of disparate things. People from different cultures, time periods, cultures and working lives have so much to share, but their lessons often come out in such specialized terms that they are hard to approach. When we are able to translate our specific experience into more general terms, accessible to a broader audience, we can gain so much.
While I am someone who designs things, Making Good is not about designing things. My aspiration is that the ideas contained herein will be presented in a way which will make them interesting to people doing all sorts of things in the world and applicable to their lives. In some ways, I don’t even care about Design. I care about solutions, and we all have problems we are trying to solve.
Making Good is structured around a series of themes and examples of the themes. The themes come from the way I see the world. As I was preparing this site, I went through stacks of notebooks and sketchbooks that span the last ten years of my life. As I read through the things that I had jotted down, I saw obvious patterns emerging. Not surprisingly, I went back to the same ideas over and over. I reacted in ways that became repetitious. The themes included here form a personal taxonomy that seems to have emerged as my lens onto the world.
I believe in the aggregate. I think things are complex and I don’t trust neat-and-tidy explanations. The themes and articles here are parts of a whole. A wall built out of field stones rather than one cast in concrete. This as an exploration for me; I’m trying to figure it all out myself. As an idea comes into focus, I’ll add it to the group; when the thing is viewed as one, it will add up to a pretty good representation of the way I see things.
I don’t want for Making Good to be an archive of dead articles. I want for it to be a living body of ideas that I can massage and refine over time so that at any given moment, they add up to something that is a fair representation of my current worldview.
I know that I am a changing growing person and that other people have a lot to teach me. So as my thinking changes, I plan to reanalyze, modify, and rewrite articles to reflect my current thinking. I am not looking for this site to reflect where I’ve been as much as where I am. I hope other people will strike up a dialogue with me and help my thinking grow and become more subtle and nuanced. As the thinking changes, so will the site.
At least that’s the plan for now.
Who am I?