How to make stuff

Here's the answer — make something worth making, make it beautiful.

Praise,

I haven't made a lot of stuff, but thankfully, it is what I have dedicated my life to doing — making stuff. So this letter will not only try to talk about how I've made things, but I want to tell you how I intend to continue making things.

This letter is more a letter to myself than to you, if I'm being honest. At the end of every letter is an inscription that says "make something beautiful everyday." I thought of it two months ago while I was trying to figure out "what's supposed to be next", and I don't think I have fully grasped what it really means.

So msbe is a signer of my next arc.

For old friends, you'll know of my previous monikers like God-Future, Deus Gui, and a couple others (that I can no longer remember for the life of me). In retrospect, I think of them as different arcs. Deus Gui is eerily similar to the Naruto "Sasuke Recovery Mission" arc, while God-Future reminds me an awful lot of "The Search for Tsunade" arc.

I'm sorry, but I cannot bring myself to edit out the previous paragraph. I guess only Naruto fans would understand what they truly mean in context. If you really want to know, search online for summaries of the arcs, especially looking out for Naruto's experiences in these arcs.

The first thing I made was a currency note. It was fiat, and I called it "Phils." I printed and shared it with my siblings. I was my first central bank. We used Phils to exchange among ourselves — actual things, food, errands, services, favours, etc. For a while, it was a good thing. I was 8 or 9 at the time, and it was my first time using CorelDRAW. I cannot remember what caused me to want a currency, but it really was the first thing I designed hours after installing CDR on the laptop.

Another time I made a thing was a poster (sort of). It was the first thing I made on my own after my 3-week graphic design bootcamp. I remember being 16 and jumping excitedly while mum was working. I said, "see what I did, it's so cool." I had designed a text to blend near-perfectly with a blob of water. It was the best thing in the world. I remember how I feel as I write right now, I felt like I was the best in the world.

The next time I made a thing was a proposal at FourthCanvas. It was a government proposal for [redacted]. I remember Victor and I poring over the source documents, and I remember figuring how they were supposed to work faster than Victor did (in all fairness, he was distracted with other work). I remember Victor leaving it all to me. Before all of this, I remember being asked if I could design an editorial, and I instinctively said yes 'cos how hard could it really be.

It wasn't hard, the client was, and everyone in the studio knew it and silently prayed for me when I accepted it. It was the first and last time I opened Adobe Fireworks to edit a file. But the most important thing about it was that it was the first time I made something that was worth more than 100,000 Naira. A single act that led me to the next thing I made — a company.

In 2018, I made the next thing, and it was the biggest thing ever for me. I started, for real this time, a design studio. And I was going to make it formidable. My first client came 8 months after we opened our doors, and the next 3 clients came within weeks of the first client. The studio earned just above 600,000 Naira in its first year. The next year was way more fun. The studio made about 3,200,000 Naira that year. That was really good.

In 2019, I made something else (while I ran the studio). I worked for a short time with a blockchain technology company. Beyond design and running a studio, I have never attempted anything else in my life until that morning. In front of seven ARM Pensions executives, I made something new. I made my first pitch.

In 2020, I made my first course and my first book. The book is somehow still in circulation today, but it is considerably one of my most proud moments. While I worked on a 2D game in 2019, I designed my first product in 2020, and went on to design four more products that year.

•••

To make something is to say yes to an idea. To make stuff is to enjoy it. It is getting obsessed with the idea of making it. It is deriving deep satisfaction from even thinking to start, and a rush of dopamine every time something works the way you intended while you make it. To make something is an addiction to creation. It is willing thoughts to life, sitting back and seeing that it was good.

To make something is a religion of craft and style. In the cocktail of life that offers survival missions, making something keeps it about the work. It is to inscribe your beliefs onto your work. It is to give it personality, and a reason for existing. To make something is to serve yourself, to deliver to the universe what it expects from you. To make something is to make it because it deserves to exist.

When you make stuff, you create value. You somewhat of a god onto yourself and to the world you are in. You are the whole and a part of a whole all at once.

Making stuff isn't about being different. If you wait to find something different before you make something, anything you make will never come from you. It'll always be benchmarked against what it is different from. Personally, I no longer subscribe to the idea of finding differentiation as a person or as a brand. I understand its contribution to the capitalist world, but it is so disconnected from the idea of just making stuff.

My theory is that no one creator is the same. To be the same is to have lived the same experiences and owned the same thoughts. And even at that, you cannot guarantee sameness — because we're intrinsically encoded differently. So if a creator focused on making stuff in a way that he truly believes in and excites him, differentiation will be an outcome. Whether it is building a business or designing a brand or launching a product company.

To make stuff is to have conviction that what you are doing is right, right now. It might be wrong tomorrow, it might have been wrong yesterday, but right now, it is right and that's all that matters. To make stuff is to risk never being understood. To make stuff is to never be satisfied with being finished.

To make stuff is to make more stuff.

Making things is not about social impact or creating function. They are secondaries. Making things is about you, and what you want. Making things puts you at the center and asks you the hard questions. What do you want? Why do you want it? Should it exist? Why make it? What else is there to make it? Who else will make it?

No one who changed the world set out wanting to change the world. They just made stuff, and luckily, what they made ended up changing the world. To make stuff is focus on what's the most important — the stuff being made and its maker.

msbe exists because I chose three things to define everything I make onwards — to make beautiful things, to make useful things, and for them to invoke a sense of wonder & curiosity in me.

I have a 40-year career ahead of me minimum, and there's so much to make in that time. Right now, I'm making developer tools. In 5 years, I have no idea what it'd be — but I'm learning new skill to make them possible.

I have this crazy idea to design my own personal local AI agent called "Alucard" in 10 - 15 years. I also once wrote in my Obsidian notes to one day design an AI OS. I have no idea if I'll ever make it, but it is big enough to form a fuzzy destination filled with bus stops of many things I will make. I might be lucky enough to see a detour that takes me to an even bigger destination.

But today, all that matters is what I'm making now — Blnk. So, Praise, what are you making?

Happy Sunday,

Praise.

PS: I've always hated the idea of finding purpose and meaning. It's tasking, and it feels like putting the cart before the horse. Meanings are not waiting to be found; they're typically created — and the creation is what births meaning.

PPS: Meaning is value. To find what makes you valuable (or why you have value) is to test the limits of your value. Usually, you find your answer to purpose & meaning there. I don't know what I'm good for on here yet, but I know I want to make stuff — a lot of stuff.