A moment for forced reflection

...while I wait for more AI tokens

There is something refreshing in how easy these tools let you in the door, but then prove to you how complex the simplest ideas are to make. For no other reason than it’s lunch’s eve (11AM) and I need some left over fried rice to absorb a stomach of coffee, think about the journey a peanut butter and jelly sandwich goes on before it hits your mouth. Outside of a wadded up tortilla or a handful of almonds, sustenance ain’t get much simpler. The bread was oats and fiber and a truck stop for butterflies mere months ago. The peanuts were similarly hanging from tress OMG PEANUTS GROW IN THE GROUND??? I mean, sure, force me to be annoying rational and I see how they look like a legume (sorry, I mean bean; no one says legume unless they’re the host of “doom & legume,” a podcast by, about, and for bean lovers with cripplingly low fiber tolerances), but consider this a death bed moment. And the jelly, well that stuff is made in big vats, transported in medium-size vats, and arrives in your home in a family-size vat (“and that’s vats,” a container store podcast, come your way soon in a nice little package). But the point being, that lil’ ol sandwich, the pinnacle of quick and delicious, has lived a whole Kerouac-ian life just to get to you.

All this is a long walk to say, don’t mistake a clear view for a short distance.

The other day, I had an idea to make a MillerKnoll prompt library, chock full of all the ideas my work pals share with me. So let’s do it, ya little bunioned go-getter. It’s list essentially, not totally unlike the list of phone numbers my family used to hang next to the landline as a kid. Things to remember that you know before you forget them that you’ll surely forget, unless you jot ‘em down so you’ll be glad you did. (Also — and mark my words, so help me, Dolly — if I ever come out with a country album, that’ll be the title, and thank you now for pre-ordering).

Now what’s in this list? Where does it live? How is it categorized and themed so that people can find things quickly? What if they have documents to add, or another prompt to hitch onto the first, or a multi-step framework prompt that loses all purpose if you jump from step one to step eight? Nuance, complexity, the sheer amount of things you didn’t even think about what the idea hit you mid-run, but are now a part of this tool. If you’re someone who enjoys untying knots, organizing junk drawers, or hopping the fence at the zoo to get the ducks to sit in a row from cutest to most cutest, you’ll like this part. (I like ONE of those things for the record, and I eagerly look forward to returning again in 2040). And if you don’t like this part, tough shit! Makers gotta make, or so the bumper stickers say. You still have to do it because some ideas are worth figuring out (and yes, some are worth jettisoning too — goodbye, polka dot wardrobe! You were always unflattering.).

But I think in this era of Big Ass Software, where a glorified rolodex can build the tallest building ever in a major metropolitan era, the people with the ideas have drifted too far away from the people who build the ideas. I think that creates disillusionment of what things actually take to build. Total cost, all in. And while I will always defend The Idea — or rather, defend the places and minds and hearts where ideas are safe, encouraged, and cherished — they are only a magnificently beautiful and equally fleeting flame. For ideas to escape the contain of a single moment requires infinitely more energy. They need equal parts air and boundaries, refinement and belief, the head and the hands.

How things are made is more than what I put on when I can’t find anything else to watch. What comes after the idea constitutes the overwhelming majority of any big picture. Somewhere in never ending projects and spare pairs of blue blocker glasses in my backpack(s), I forgot this truth. But toiling over cells and pulls and and pushes, there was a moment when I refreshed, and it was there, looking back at me for the first time, all cute and swaddled. A thing. I made. It made me really, really, really proud, this little half-baked thing. I’d forgotten what it was like to tinker, test, and toy with a precious, malleable idea as it slowly solidified into a thing you’ve shaped, all so you can sink your hands into the soil and savor the fruits of your labor.

Mmmmm… ground bean nuts of the earth. I made these.