The Water Tower
An accidental summer project
I live in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle, which is assembled around one of the tallest hills in the city. At the top of the hill sits a reservoir, now buried underground with a new park atop it. And with that reservoir, a water tower.
The Maple Leaf water tower is a 100 foot tall iconic structure in the neighborhood. Despite no longer being used to store water, it remains in use as a cell phone and microwave tower. The ring of maple leaves around the tank echo the maple leaf motif of the green signs at the entrances to the area (“Neighborhood of the Year, 1986", they remind us).
The tower is a mile from my house, a 15 minute walk up Roosevelt Way. Since I lost my 125 pounds, I try to get in at least a 30 minute walk a few times a week. One night, on one of those walks, I snapped a picture of the tower from the new park and posted it to Twitter.
Every time I took I walk, I’d take pictures. A few days later, I posted yet another water tower picture:
At which point my sometimes nemesis Joel responded:
And I thought, why not make it a thing?
So, every time I walked up the hill, I snapped a picture of the water tower. I tried different angles, different locations, different times of day. The water tower became the goal of those walks. 30-60 minutes of pushing myself up and down the hill to get yet another shot.
I’ve been reading Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. He details why he, a prize-winning novelist, came to be a marathon runner. One of the more cited passages in the book is on what he thinks about when he runs:
I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m running? I don’t have a clue. On cold days I guess I think a little about how cold it is. And about the heat on hot days. When I’m sad I think a little about sadness. When I’m happy I think a little about happiness…. But really as I run, I don’t think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.
I run myself, 8-10 miles a week, but I find there’s no void when I do run, only thoughts of pain, thoughts of how much longer I have to go, and mostly the things I’ve done wrong. The only solace I have in running is that I’m moving far faster than those who have dragged me down in the past are capable of moving without collapsing from the exertion. So, then, there’s only one critic I have to deal with: Me.
Walking, though, is different. It’s easier, less painful, and more a question of control than of speed. I’m not out to break records, I’m out to get work in. And thus on these walks, I can hear my critics (even if they do complain I walk too fast). And, most importantly, I can hear the part of me that can stand up to my critics.
And when that part takes over, I can unpack the criticism and look for the truth. I can isolate the slights from the mistakes, sift the comments for what’s real, and start looking for root causes I can fix.
Not enough experience with this particular domain? OK, what do I need to do to get it? Where do I start the research? How do I go about it? What is my personal deliverable to prove I did learn it?
Compared to a designer whose career has stalled? Could it be true? Wait, no, because here is how you two are very different. But here’s how you’re the same… so what to do about that? What do you change? What gaps need to be filled in?
Worried the current UX strategic plan isn’t working? Well, is it? Yes, but no. Why? Well, it’s missing accountability. OK, that’s easy — here’s what we’ll do to build accountability, and by the way, grab your phone and start scheduling meetings for tomorrow and time to take care of your action items.
I spent my youth being bullied, ruthlessly, for being different, for being smart. Bullied to the point that I became defensive, prickly, and unwilling to trust anyone. It took years for me to get somewhat free of that, but my last job triggered some sort of PTSD within me. The bullying actions of some became remembrances of horrors past.
And so the walks where I confronted the voices also became about walking away from being a victim. From playing that role I learned so well in school and was reprising in a toxic environment where an Other was so needed to keep All Things In Line.
The water tower, then, became more than a summer art project. It became a talisman. I could walk to the tower, empty out the self-hatred and the anger along the way, take my picture, and feel a little cleaner. I could, perhaps, forgive my bullies past and present if I persisted.
But forgiveness is slow. Walking to the top of Maple Leaf and back isn’t seven or seventy-seven or seven hundred seventy-seven times around the Ka’aba or to Canterbury and back. But it is, slowly, generating the self-care I’ve needed to at least unwind what happened at my last job.
I choose to walk because in walking I am making myself better, physically and mentally.
So I keep on walking up to the top of Maple Leaf, on the broken sidewalks of Roosevelt, past the two coffee shops, the 7-11, the medical marijuana dispensary, the hardware store, and the framing shop with the picture of Ron Jeremy as the Mona Lisa in the window. And every time I get to the top, I take another picture of the Maple Leaf water tower. Every picture is another piece of my summer art project, but it’s also another symbol of my greater personal project to be better at who I am and what I do — and forgive others and myself.
Every trip is another iteration. The tower never changes, but I do. I have to.
