Distance.
I am working on something new. I’d figure that’d be obvious by now but it probably is worth saying here. Everybody asks me what, of course, I’m working on, but I don’t feel okay telling very many people right now, because it is unfinished work, and I don’t like showing unfinished work, or even discussing unfinished terms of relatively finished work, which is sort of what this is; and so when I do tell people, if they don’t live in Chicago, and so I can’t take them out for coffee and tell them everything, I handwrite them a letter. I sit down and stick a pen on a piece of paper and I move my hand such that letters come out. Then I put the letter in an envelope, and I put the envelope in a box, and due to technology and some sort of complicated infrastructure the letter ends up in an entirely different box that is owned by the person whom I wish to tell. And then, of course, they are told.
So far, I have told three people.
I am gratified and humbled that so many people are interested in what I am working on, but I am not planning to tell very many more people before I am done with the thing. There will be fingers left on two hands, when counting the number of people that I will tell between now and when I am done with the thing, which deadline I am predicting as “some time in the future.” Not now. I love you, really, but I will not tell you now. In the interim, blog posts here will have to suffice.
Which doesn’t, of course, prevent people from asking me. Constantly. What I am working on. Which, due to said unfinished work thing, makes me really super uncomfortable. And so I have adopted a routine where I usually respond to this with “Doomsday device…” and trail off and stare into the middle distance until they stop asking me any questions. Now that you know that I do this, I cannot stress this enough: do not become one of these people. But you’re nice, and you’re my friend, right? So I can only assume that this wasn’t even something I needed to say.
Okay. Here. I compiled a list of the things I am not working on.
- The great american novel
- A doomsday device
- Cadence & Slang 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Cadence & Slang: Kindle Edition
- Cadence & Slang: Second Edition
- Freelance UX work
- A stealth group texting startup
- Any kind of startup (I mean, this is Chicago, after all)
Here is probably a useful thing. Imagine a big marble slab that consists of all the things I could be working on. Chisel away all of the stuff I am not doing, like some majestic David of productivity, his dong hanging out like he does not even give a crap. And what’s left is what I am working on. I am happy that you figured it out.
