ENTRYWAY
I never wanted to write a book.
After all, I come from the digital generation. You know, the generation that prefers Instagram to Kodak cameras and can’t focus on anything for longer than two minutes. The generation of which 72% downloaded at least one app in the past week. Yes, that generation.
So let me explain why you’re now reading this. I’ll start from the beginning.
I’ve always had a very strong drive simply to create. When I was a year old, I was building with blocks. By two, I couldn’t put down my crayons and markers. And don’t even get me started on finger paint. A few years later, I was making up stories about my stuffed animals, decorating and redecorating (and re-redecorating) my room, and teaching myself to French-braid my own hair.
As a teenager, I started experimenting with sewing machines, ovens, and power tools. My mom (awesomely) let me have a cell phone at age thirteen. I used my computer to write short stories and to play Oregon Trail. I forded many rivers back in those days.
And then the Internet happened.
By the time I was legally able to drink, I was a full-on tech nerd. I spent most of my college life working remotely for Silicon Valley companies. I scored a gig at Apple, learned how to code, and then transitioned to a career at Google. And I loved my job. I worked at the number one “best place to work” in the country. What was not to love?
Well, for one thing, working in tech meant spending endless hours at my desk and online—eating via takeout, doing all my holiday shopping on Amazon, and hiring people to do such mundane real-world things as hanging a coat rack. Staring at that big (then increasingly small) screen all day, day after day, took the idea of “living in the cloud” to a whole new level.
Then something changed. I left my job at Google to start a tech company of my own, but first I decided to give myself a break. Those six months may have been the most transformative of my life.
They say you should try to make your hobby your career, but I didn’t even know what my hobby was. So I chose not to schedule myself at all and to see what I naturally gravitated toward each day.
I ended up deciding that what I really wanted to do was learn how to do and make new things. I joined a “makerspace” called TechShop, which is basically a gym for making things. After paying a hundred bucks or so a month, you can come in whenever you want and use all of their machines. And, man, do they have some incredible machines! Sewing machines, 3D printers, laser cutters, wood saws, screen printers . . . the list goes on and on.
I learned how to design things in 3D, how to laser-cut wood (and even vegetables) and more. During this same period, I took all kinds of advanced cooking and baking classes. I even got certified in letterpress printing. My favorite part was learning how to create my own polymer plates online, which saved me tons of time working with the press.
All the while, I was also continuing to experiment with creating software. I used new online applications that helped me brush up on my coding skills, and I even programmed a few little apps of my own.
Turns out, my favorite hobby was (and still is) creating. It didn’t matter what I was working on, as long as I was making something. On an average day, I’d make a terrarium in the morning, 3D-print a necklace by noon, spend my post-siesta time coding, paint a canvas by sunset, and end the day with homemade ice cream.
The beauty in all this was that whether I was designing a 3D necklace on my computer to print in real life, using apps that taught me how to letterpress, or scouring the web for delicious recipes to re-create, I was naturally using the virtual world to help me make stuff in the physical one.
That’s the lightbulb that clicked on in my head: today’s generation thrives in the virtual world, but as humans we remain inspired to work and create in the physical world. Why can’t these two worlds come together?
Turns out, they can.
(Now comes the part where I decided to write a book.)
Not unlike many peers of mine, I consume a lot of information online. And while many argue that we will soon face the end of books and magazines, digital media seems to be having an ironic opposite effect: the value of an analog piece of work is much higher than its digital counterpart. In fact, sales of printed books are up year over year! In today’s Internet era, analog works of creativity are treated more like art and less like links you can toss around to your five thousand Facebook friends. These projects are touched by your hands, displayed on your walls, and saved for years on end. And depending on the subject matter, they may be referenced hundreds of times and may even be passed down from one generation to the next.
After thinking long and hard about this book-writing project, I realized that the internal challenge I was facing in writing a book was basically a metaphor for how I see my generation these days.
“To make something, with my own hands—it’s something our generation wasn’t taught, and it’s so empowering. You can feel a zeitgeist around this.”
INTERVIEW, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 2012
We have spent the past decade so immersed in the digital world that our bodies are aching to participate in real, physical human experiences we can create in the analog world. Some are even paying to attend “digital detox” camps just to get away from their virtual reality.
It is for these reasons that I started my company, Brit + Co. There’s a movement afoot that celebrates creativity by balancing the digital and the analog, but this movement needs a new generation of teachers—people who grew up like me, with the benefit of all the efficiencies that modern technology has to offer, but who have stayed true to their “maker” and human roots. Brit + Co helps adults unlock their creativity and rediscover their inner child—the one who used to love to draw, build, and play. We believe that every human being is an artist and that every moment of our lives is a canvas. Our homes are our grounding place, the space where we are both extroverts and introverts, where we relax as much as we work. Shouldn’t creativity begin there?
“Forty-two percent of Gen X and Gen Y say that moments that aren’t documented are ‘wasted.’”