Justin, in the making

I asked what you stopped. And then realized it’s about never being finished.

Last week I wrote about a bear I drew in sixth grade and then never really drew anything again. I ended that essay with a question: what did you stop?

People answered, and I loved hearing folks’ stories. Because the conversation wasn’t really about stopping… it was about starting.

And then it hit me: I hadn’t answered it for myself. I’d asked a question I thought was for other people. It wasn’t really about drawing for me.

Create to see yourself.

So here’s my answer.

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In tenth or eleventh grade I wrote a children’s book called “Playing Chess with Dragons”. I made one copy. I never really showed it to anyone, and that was never the point of writing it.

The physical copy is gone. Lost somewhere along the way, a long time ago.

But I remember it vividly. The premise, the characters, how it looked, the message I wanted to convey. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. Usually when someone told me they were trying to write a book, or opened up about a creative project of their own. I’d listen and I’d remember.

Oh yeah I should really go do that, too.

So I’m not restoring it. I can’t. I’m rebuilding it from memory, and right now I’m just getting the story back down the way I remember it, before I touch anything else.

It was always meant to be a series, too. Playing “blank” with “blank.” A game and a creature, and the game has to actually matter to the story. It can’t just sit there in the title. Chess with dragons was the only one I ever wrote. I have a feeling the next one involves a handpan.

Perhaps the version in my head is better than the one that existed. And that’s ok.

It’s funny how “playing” has always been there for me, given that it’s in the title and that’s what I focus on now with Eleven Dunbar, Levity Field, and other projects.

And it’s in my family too. We grew up making games on the fly with different balls, socks, people, boards, whatever and whoever was around was part of it. We had a family card game, beach games, and my great aunt made board games.

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Here’s the part I didn’t expect. Once I started making things again, I started making a lot of them.

New patterns on the handpan. The book. Game ideas for Elfen Town, the town and social network we're building inside Eleven Dunbar. Poetry on here. Long pieces like this one. Art, cards, and anything to leverage AI as digital crayons.

None of it has to be for anything. None of it has to make money. That’s the whole point and it’s the only reason any of it is happening. I’m making things because of how it feels, and to see what I’m capable of.

Create to see yourself.

And then, within about a week, the voice came back.

Is the book any good? Would anyone read it? Is it worth the hours? Same thing with the handpan.

When I sit down and just play, something magical comes out. The second I hit record, the second I try to make a pattern loop cleanly enough to become a track inside our town, I can tell I’m playing from my mind. It’s the clearest way I’ve found to see the difference between making something from your head and making it from your body. Gerhard Molin talks about this a lot, and for a long time I would kind of nod along. Uh huh. Oh yeah. I get what that means.

Now I feel it. What it feels like to create something from a place that’s not in my head.

That’s the third layer arriving early. Creating for other people, before I’ve let myself create for me. It’s the exact thing I wrote about last week as the problem.

Knowing the trap doesn’t stop you walking into it. It just means you notice your foot going in.

So now I hit record and forget it’s on. I play the same pattern for twenty minutes and keep the fifteen or so seconds that I like.

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The thing that actually helped wasn’t discipline. It was Gerhard.

This week one of us would make something, the other would see it, go off and make his own version, and come back to show it. My Substack header. Then his new cards for his podcast, Unreasonable Art of Living. Then my storybook cards. Then new ones for Eleven Dunbar and Levity Field. Which led to an animated cartoon for Levity Field as well.

None of it was planned. It’s not competition, it’s creative inspiration.

And it was really fun.

It’s like kids in art class who keep making things and huddling around to see what everyone else made. Except we’re adults with digital crayons.

I called us the first two test members of Eleven Dunbar. Gerhard put it better: “We’re just kids inviting other kids to play.”

Last week I wrote that all of this is easier somewhere nobody is grading. This is what that looks like in practice. It’s easier to keep making things when the people around you are making things too. And pushing you to go further. Go deeper.

It’s not about being left behind.

It’s about seeing what’s been right in front of you all along.

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On this week’s episode I told Gerhard I want a journal for my birthday, so I can start writing by hand again. I don’t write with my hands much anymore, and my handwriting shows it.

Somewhere in that same conversation I had a shower thought out loud. We’ve all already made our own font. It’s our handwriting. Nobody had to be good at it for it to become yours. You just kept writing, and it turned into you.

We exist to create.

A while back I picked justinthemaking as my handle. This week it stopped being a handle and started being a description. Making things. Myself. The most out of what life has given, provided, and left waiting for me to step into.

I thought I had burned the boats on my old life in tech a couple of years ago, and for a while I talked about the reinvention like a project with an end date. It isn’t. It’s still going, and I don’t think it’s supposed to finish.

And funny enough, I’m building tech again. Art. Using AI. Building a community. A virtual world. A social network. An app. Children’s book. Music.

The boats I thought I had burned was a personal Ship of Theseus. I’m still here. There are no burns, no scars, just gratitude and the wind in my sails.

The bear got one turn. The book is getting a second. The handpan gets a new one most mornings.

I will get another. And another. Refusing to be finished.

Still in the making.