Making feels like such an important part of my life. I mean, it might very well be due to my self-promotion as a maker, or an inadvertently projected image of one, or maybe it's both connected in a feedback loop.

Making makes me happy - pun intended. I gravitate towards making all the time; it's something I regularly invest time every week, that I prioritize on holidays, and that people around me have come to embrace as something that I need.

Looking back, when I try to figure out when all this started, I have the impression it has always been there. It just might've had different names. Growing up it might've been called tinkering, making is such a strong word. I was extremely lucky to have parents that would encourage me to explore and try things, to embrace failure and to keep trying. I seem to remember back then consistency was suggested, but never required.

As an adult making has taken multiple shapes, albeit the most prominent has to be building software. My education as an engineer has unsurprisingly impacted the type of things I feel inclined to explore and try.

An extremely common trend for all kinds of engineers is to have pet personal projects; as in they invest a bunch of time and love into a project that is only valuable to them for no monetary reason. Today, I see these projects as yet another shape of making. Picking up a topic of interest, a technology of choice and exploring the possibilities on how to solve the myriad of problems that come with any project.

I confess, early on my professional career, my making mojo was severely affected. I would often freeze before starting a project thinking it wasn't valuable enough to attempt it, or I would start it and then feel ashamed if I dropped it. These two were a burden for longer than they should've been. I think a lot of what I experienced was a combination of stage fright - fearing my projects would not measure up to what experienced engineers would put out there - and fear of being judged for starting a project and not pushing to its completion - whatever that might've been. It took me a while to realize that these two fears would be the end of my making if I didn't overcome them.

So I was in trouble: I would not start a project for fear to drop it before it amounted to something, and I would not come up with a project that was worth of my non-existent audience because I would not start any. It was not like I wasn't doing or trying anything, but it wouldn't make feel as fulfilled as they should've.

I eventually came to terms and overcame these fears by re-discovering and re-learning what my parents taught me so many years ago - they did with no explicit statements of purpose, but with actions; the real value of exploring and trying. I realized that exploring allowed me to keep myself current, to learn new things, and to feel mesmerized at the ingenuity of my peers; and that trying gave me those aha!-moments of understanding the challenges and reasons behind things, by experimenting and getting my hands dirty.

These days I acknowledge myself as the product of that making, both personally and professionally. I'm curious about how things work, and I also like to try new things. I do not fear starting a project anymore, or drop it halfway through when the challenge has worn out. I accept not every project has to be worth of a place in the Olympus, and that's fine. A lot of what I have later taken advantage of in a professional setting I have previously acquired in through this constant making.

I'm a human. Fallible. I write this entry to share my process, but really mostly as a reminder for myself to keep making.