Day 7. An Easter Sunday and a Creative Clash
Sunday, the 31st of March 2024
This is the day-by-day story of an idea-to-an-MVP project. The MVP should be completed in 4–6 weeks or 42 days — very Douglas Adams-y. To read about the other days, check the homepage of Built In Public. Every day all the previous days are re-read, fine tuned and polished.
Around the evening C. began messaging me. He has read my articles and likes them, but has comments.
My blood went cold. The biggest challenge in my life has always been to get my ideas thru. The reason this is a challenge is because I am always way ahead into realms I have no experience with, yet I have pretty good ideas what can be done and my intuition is first class.
The fragility of ideas is well known. One of my favourite passages is in the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
And one of the freshest passages I recently found on this topic is from the instructions on now to swim the English Channel.
I have partially resolved that by being shamelessly brave and unafraid of losing people and relationships, which try to pigeonhole me. And partially by developing resistance and cooperation skills.
One thing that helped me in this is the understanding of horses. Lotta and Ella have been riding since they can walk, which gives me over 20 years experience with the nature of horses, even though I do not ride myself. Recently I even bought a horse — Candy, which gives me an even better view into the psychology of a horse. Here is Candy today in the afternoon. Ella is running a complex program to rebalance Candy’s muscles.
The number one thing one learns about a horse is that a horse is neither a bicycle, nor a dog. To cooperate with a horse one has to get its consent and agree upon the course of action. A horse has a much stronger opinion, than a dog.
So, feeling, that C. might want to interfere too much with my writing, I said “No.” I have a suitable t-shirt for that.
“No, you cannot edit the articles yourself.”
Given, that Built In Public is his idea, this is a brave move. But as with a horse, we need to establish our red lines, “It is your idea, but it is my writing. My creative process. I will listen to you, but then it must pass through my creative process.” C. nodded. He is smart. I like him.
We discussed for a while and I clearly saw his needs, which I recognised as my needs too and some are solved simply by re-reading it, which I do with all the previous days when I add a day. Valeri Gergiev once told an aspiring young conductor, “you do not ned to give so many instructions to the orchestra. They are professionals. They have heard most of what wasn’t OK. Just let them play it one more time and 80% of the issues will self-resolve.”
I worked with an organisation in Manchester onto a method of helping autistic people communicate — safely and efficiently — with the industry. I called it “a communication protocol” and when we developed it, I was surprised how simple it is. “I want written instructions. I do not like small talk. I have lunch between 12:00 and 12:30.” Done. So I was happy when C. and I began developing this protocol today. He should tell me when a passage is unclear or he thinks a topic deserves more detail or a topic should be treated as more confidential and he leaves me to write it as I want and can.
I will sleep well tonight. I hope he too.
We will continue tomorrow.
