We are endowed by our creator, to go forth and create. This relationship continues eternally, and is the basis of understanding. I believe this to be the central truth of all things.
Our relationship with life, is one of understanding our purpose in relation to the greater whole.
Through creation, we are meant to understand that which has created us. To then go on to participate in a new act of creation. The less spiritual version of this, is simply the relationship we tend to have with our parents.
It was not rare for my brother and I to sit around the dinner table and ask our parents questions about how they grew up. Which led to a story of their life, which would equally include details from their relationship with their parents. While this was a source of joy and education in my childhood, I recognize this isn’t true for everyone. However, absence or simply a variation of my experience does not change break this progression. This is also the theme of many beloved shows and films. The universality of inherited family trauma.
To bring this to product. I believe entrepreneurship to be a spiritual act. From where there was nothing, we will into existence what we believe should be.
This is our act of creation. We paint the future as a horizon. Never to be reached, to continue outward forever. The evolution of this higher vision.
Even Amazon operates in the belief that it has not arrived. To have arrived, is to be put to rest. To have completed your journey. The end of growth, and maybe in a sense “product market peace”.
However, for all of us that understand that we would rather live in the tension that is near arrival — we iterate. Iteration is to me the technical term for our relationships with products we have originated.
Product is a give and take. If you simply keep giving to the product, you are not spending time in understanding that very thing that you have brought into the world. Take time to listen, meditate with, give space to… because your product will show you things that you may not have arrived to independently.
Like other relationships, understand what your shared beliefs are. How you act on those beliefs. What this ends up producing. This is the essence of product culture. Is design the end all be all? Are you blindly led by where the data takes you? Do you / one person end up calling all the shots?
The last link in the relationship between creator and created is with the user. When we create something that then exists beyond us, we have lost our control. The art was in the act. The product as it is, lives in a simple residual.
I believe this is why people have trouble publishing any type of work. And the more personal it is, the deeper the investment. The higher the psychological stakes. Because for someone to use your creation, is essentially to be used yourself.
Now the tension of iteration is a silver lining. Because the work is never finished. As we evolve and mature, so does our creation. Thus the relationship loop has come back to us. The creator. Tasked when breathing new life.
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?
— Joan Didion
This is why I am forced to write when I build product. It is a spiritual act of clarity. I find writing to be one of the more draining activities I have chosen to take up for myself. But without it, I would be ruinously lost.
Bowling For Sanity
Recently, the girlfriend and I have made bowling our go to hobby. I think there is something very cathartic about hurling a ball down a wood lane, to obliterate pins at the other end. You can metaphorically substitute the balls and pins for anything you may be feeling in your life. And the repetitive motion allows you this release each time you roll.
Additionally, I think that at a very primal level, humans enjoy watching things smash together. Our attraction to football is the same as our attraction to porn. It is simply flesh, hitting flesh.
Maybe that is reductive of me. But I find these low-stake reductive exercises fun at times. For example, why do we go to the club? Is it to have a good time and dance with friends — sure. But we all know, in the back of our mind what we are actually partaking in is a mating call. We all want that cinematic moment when someone else vibes with our grooves, syncs up, and makes it happen. AND YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF IF YOU DON’T THINK THIS IS TRUE!!!
That’s it for today. Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.