I make things. I often use tools other people have developed, e.g., hammers (some people forge their own hammers, I don’t) and screwdrivers and saws; cameras (some people make their own cameras, I don’t) and printers and developing tanks; ovens and baking pans and measuring cups. But in the end, I use those tools to make things. I make things because I enjoy making (I also enjoy taking things apart, but that’s a different story). Sometimes the things I make are lovely and work well, sometimes they aren’t and don’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters to me (and I’m the only one who matters in this story) is I made them.
I don’t assemble things (unless I have to).
Perhaps that is why I don’t have a social media presence, why I don’t write on the many very beautiful and shiny platforms that encourage writing, why I don’t share my thoughts in 280 characters, why I don’t collect images I find online into a virtual scrapbook. Such fora are not tools for making something, at least not in the way I like to make things. They might let me assemble something, and that something might be slick and look remarkably like millions of other things people have assembled — the internet is a monotonous wasteland of polished similarity, like some vast 1990s housing development that’s not going to age well or, apparently, any coffee shop anywhere.
Instead, I have my little sandbox, where I build the things I want to build in the way I want to build them (to be sure, the tools I have chosen constrain what I can make — when that becomes a problem for me, I’ll find new tools). I don’t need anybody’s approval or disapproval, and I am not looking to start a “discussion” — if you want to chat, send me an email so we can meet for coffee. I don’t need anybody’s validation through comments or trackbacks. I take this position not because I have aversion to “someone else’s platform” or a fear of an algorithm or urge to be/build my own platform or worry about being the fodder for some other platform’s monetization scheme or worry my stuff will disappear. Those old chestnuts are still legitimate, I guess, but seem to privilege monetizing over making.
I just kinda like making things.