My Philosophy
Much of what inspires me to write or create is a strong desire to learn, explain, and share. It is a desire that has been with me longer than I can remember.
There’s very little sitting still that I can stand. My thoughts are often stacked on top of each other like pancakes and get so tall they topple over one another in a giant, syrupy mess.
Sometimes what keeps me sane is the idea that there are many more people in the world like me, with their own giant stacks of pancakes. They know what it’s like to juggle while wondering, “Where the hell am I going to put all these pancakes?”
I’m constantly pushing myself to learn new things and challenge my understanding, which means I question myself often. Sometimes I have to get things wrong and try again.
I published a ‘zine in high school about what it means to fail after examining some long held familial expectations. I realized that I was defining failure by the expectations placed on me by others rather than defining it for myself. As long as I was attempting to conform to standards that didn’t fit me, I would always be a fish climbing a tree.
I had to learn to trust my own intuition and self-awareness to gain insight into what failure would look like for me.
For me, failure is the point where I am no longer willing to learn, to challenge myself, and to be wrong. I think it has become popular to pretend that you have all the answers and to project an “all-knowing” aura. But the people I like to work with already know that the Wizard of Oz is just a man behind a curtain.
There’s more to learn and more work to be done in the space between the known and unknown. There is no perfect knowledge, just like there is no perfect end product. As long as there is room for improvement, there is a path towards understanding.
