I was once a mathematics professor, a path I set myself on fairly early in life. During the tenure process, I worried I would have to leave my position, and realized I wouldn’t want my next move to be to another professorship. I did get tenure, but started working with a career counselor in the late summer, and tendered my resignation in the fall.

The career counseling didn’t actually lead me to programming and web design – after a sidetrack to consider professional organizing I decided to make a go of my crafting as a business. I learned a lot about myself in the process, though, via questions and introspection and reading my old diaries (oh dear). In particular, I realized I have two touchstones, and wrote a sort of personal manifesto.

puzzles

I like a lot of things that look different on the surface: miniatures, organization, programming, teaching, designing. The umbrella for all of them is puzzles: all of these things have a specific goal that you know when you’ve met, and require ingenuity, creativity, and perhaps a wide range of skills to accomplish.

Programming: the goal is a program that accomplishes a specific task, with sensible user interface and other behavior. In addition to working out algorithms, web applications require getting multiple programming languages to work together and creativity in making an attractive layout across a range of devices.

Teaching: the goal is getting the concepts across or the basics of the skill transmitted. It requires finding the sweet spot of enough detail to understand but not so much to overwhelm, determining the source of student difficulties, and thinking outside the box for analogies or illustrations.

Organization: the goal is to store objects in a useful and aesthetically pleasing fashion. The creativity is in thinking of different uses for limited space, and perhaps repurposing decorative objects so they are also functional.

Miniatures: the goal is to make something as true to its full-scale version as possible but at the specified size (at least for me. I don’t like miniature cabinets and drawers that don’t open). It requires some creative engineering and can benefit, again, from repurposing objects.

Crafting: my usual goal is to recreate a shape in fiber or satisfy a practical need with a crafted item. Inherently two-dimensional materials have to be put into three-dimensional form, supply limitations respected, and a suitable order of operations chosen so the piece goes together smoothly and as easily as possible.

Mathematical research is not a puzzle. Though it certainly requires creativity and breadth of skill, it is far too open-ended to be a puzzle.

None of these are puzzles with only a single correct answer, unlike most things called puzzles. They also vary in difficulty; I’ve focused on programming largely because I like my puzzles very hard (provided it is not because I must know the names of fifth century Scandinavian royalty or have insanely good fine motor skills).

my question is HOW

How do I make it fit? make it work? make do? get the message across? optimize?

more than meets the eye

I loved weirdness as a child. Myths, aliens, parallel universes, fairylands, the paranormal, animal intelligence, magic and advanced technology, things that worked by dream logic. I loved things that suggested those worlds were within reach, perhaps even hidden in unnoticed pockets of our own mundane world. I wanted there to be a hidden layer, another dimension, magical underpinnings, secret talents. I didn’t want mysteries to be explained, and although I am glad to be rational and realistic, my wonder and credulity were the saddest loss of growing up.

I started reading fantasy and science fiction in fifth grade, but even before that I liked Shel Silverstein and Daniel Pinkwater. I was fascinated by a book my mother had about gnomes, presenting them as though they were real and exploring their culture. I inhaled the von Daniken books about aliens building the pyramids and as an explanation for passages in Ezekiel. Even now, the story outline of Labyrinth, Lizard Music, Alice in Wonderland, and a lot of Gaiman’s work (Stardust, Neverwhere, Coraline, Mirrormask) is one of my favorites: ordinary person enters extraordinary world and has to survive and succeed at some task. The ordinary person has to figure out the logic of the new world, which is different from mundane logic but has its own internal consistency. (there’s a puzzle for you)

This love of magic worlds ties in with my desire to have miniature furniture work properly – otherwise it takes you out of the moment. It goes with the little bug habitats I made as a child. It quite possibly even explains my fervent love for Robyn Hitchcock.

means and ends

I wish to put my touch on the world in such a way as to add to the wonder of it. I want my daily work to be solving challenging puzzles.