About

Stuff About Making Stuff and Stuff I Made
One of my greatest personal goals is to live the most creative life possible. This website is about that effort: my creative experiences, what shapes them, and what they teach. It’s about the journey to become the person I want to be.

Every experience–big and small–shapes how we see and what we create in some way. As such, there’s really no topic that’s out of bounds here. Mostly I share things I’ve made, inspiring people and works, challenges faced, and solutions found.  There may not always be such a clear connection to the larger subject, though. And, yes, I am deliberately proffering that little disclaimer to account for the fact that I can and will wander. Sometimes a fair distance. Sorry in advance.

A Little Bit About Me
The best times of my life are spent making things. That usually means music, images, or words. It can also mean sandwiches, jack-o-lanterns, and TtV cameras.

Music. In the beginning it was improvised drum kits, an old electric organ, an acoustic guitar found in a dumpster, and shortwave radios tuned to strange, distant signals. Add a tape recorder and a brief stint on the trombone (ah, 5th grade) and that pretty much sums up my formative years as a musician. Then, at sixteen, I begged my parents for an electric bass. They caved, buying me a totally sweet Hondo p-bass knockoff and a 5-watt practice amp for my birthday. That was it; the obsession was immediate and enduring. After that came lessons, bands, school, and all the rest. Bass is still my main instrument but now I mess around with guitar, percussion, keyboards and whatever else I can get. Lately, I make a lot of music with computers and synthesizers (actual and virtual), indulging a love for electronica, ambient, and the music of horror film. I’m also teaching myself how to record all this stuff.

Writing is something I’ve done almost as long as music. I’ve earned some recognition for it in the past and it’s part of my day job now, but my relationship with writing has been a little strained, to be honest. With personal projects there’s a tendency to hit certain walls again and again, especially with longer works. I’ll probably share those struggles here.

Then there’s visual arts and graphic design. By some miracle (and through a fair amount of persistence), I’ve managed to teach myself enough to be able to work graphic design into my day job over the past several years. I started out doing mostly writing but now I get to make logos, posters, all kinds of business/marketing collateral, package designs, and even a little web design now and again. On my own time I scratch the itch with digital photography, Photoshop, Illustrator, and by changing the design of this site (which often means breaking and then figuring out how to fix it).

That’s most of it, anyway. Making stuff seems to be make me happy, even if what I’m making or why I’m making it doesn’t seem entirely clear. As a very wise friend once said, maybe it’s reason enough that it didn’t exist before you made it.

-Jon