Making

“More than mere consumers of technology, we are makers, adapting technology to our needs and integrating it into our lives. Some of us are born makers and others, like me, become makers almost without realizing it.

“Maybe it started when I burned my first music CD … Maybe it started when I got Wi-Fi working, not for myself but for my whole family … Maybe it started when I brought my digital camera and laptop on vacation and found that my slideshow was ready before the vacation was even over.”

~ Dale Dougherty
MAKE Magazine, Issue 1

Well damn. Who does that sound like?

I don’t dig around in hardware, usually. (Usually.) In fact, what I am often follows more along the lines of something Merlin Mann and Danny O’ Brien said in that same first issue—“Some of us like solving puzzles a bit more than we like solved puzzles.” I am recognizing myself in this magazine; I am recognizing myself in people I met at SXSW. I see the word “Entrepreneur” in front of Alex Beauchamp’s name on her site and I think, That’s like me. I see “Maker” and I think, That’s like me. I think I am an adventurer, and that’s all only a little bit of who I am. But it feels like a quest. I need to know. What am I?

I feel as if I have been working so hard to be something I had to be, I have forgotten to look to find out what I really am. And now that I’m looking, I’m discovering that it’s not as easy as it looks, knowing what you are.

I recognized myself in the Boss Lady panelists. I recognized myself in what Violet Blue is doing, creating herself as a brand but at the same time letting her SELF shine out, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, all these things that tell her audience who she is. I see more and more that there is something that I am, I just don’t have a word for it yet. Maybe I am making myself. But I want to name myself, too.

What am I?

Tagged as: Blog, meganculture, worldhacking