Iterations is the audio version of my occasional journal/newsletter where I share stories, personal experiences, and ongoing questions around creativity, process, and making things that matter. Some episodes are more reflective, some are more practical, and some are just me thinking out loud and trying to make sense of things.
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So there I was, looking through stacks of receivers, DVD players, and the odd VCR when I spotted something I didn’t recognize. It was big — big enough to cover nearly two receivers. A CD player was sitting on top of it and when I lifted it off, I think I actually gasped, which Adrianne says is a sure sign that you’ve found something good. It was a flatbed scanner made by a company called Viisan ,…
When I was a kid, the camera only came out for special occasions. A single roll of film might last months, sometimes longer. Most of the time the camera lived in a cupboard until there was a reason to bring it out. Birthdays. Christmas. Vacations. Graduations. Film wasn’t something you wasted, so every frame had to justify itself. Back then, the camera itself felt almost mysterious. My father…
I've built more personal websites than I care to count, starting with my first one back in 1997. For years, the goal was simple — keep it fresh, keep it updated, keep the portfolio current enough to land the next job. I picked that habit up partly from Jakob Nielsen, the usability researcher who was convinced sites needed to feel alive to repeat visitors, and I ran with it — random hero images in…
"We're not geniuses, we're just regular guys who are interested in things." — Neil Peart On August 1st, 2015, Rush played their final show at the Forum in LA. I was there, just as I had been for so many Rush shows over the years. That show felt different — special in a way that we weren’t really prepared for. For months leading up to it, there were rumors that this would be the last show and after…
For most of my life, I’ve been trying to reconcile two very different ideas about success. One was rooted in practicality, achievement, and outcomes. The other was rooted in curiosity, learning, and exploration. In this episode, I look back at a question my mother asked me during my senior year of high school, the unexpected lessons hidden in a lifetime of creative work, and why I’ve come to…
"Sometimes the thing you’re skilled at needs to be broken a little before it can surprise you again." For the past several years, I’ve primarily identified as a painter, despite the fact that the most consistent work I’ve done is writing. That said, lately I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that I might not want to paint anymore — at least not the way I’ve been doing it. Not because I’ve lost…
Lately I’ve been feeling the weight of how complicated everything seems — I even wrote a bit about it in the last Iteration . It seems that the scale of it all — the speed, the certainty, the volume — can often make even small efforts feel almost invisible. I’ve caught myself wondering whether the things that I make or the conversations I have matter in any “real” way, and honestly, that unsettles…
Towards the end of last year, I started thinking about building a new website for myself. Not just another vanity site (although I’ve built plenty of those), but more of an archive of the various things I’ve done over my career and a hub where I can share stories around what I’m thinking about and what I’m working on that aren’t dependent on The Algorithm. After years of inconsistent, and if I’m…
About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you, or worse, that I will.” I’m not going to lie, that hit pretty hard. I knew I was in a dark place, but…
It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed, I thought. One of my earliest memories of this truck is of waking up on the bench seat at Buckskin…
