Build Your Own Rudder

Every morning the wildlife eats breakfast outside my window.

The birds come first, then the chipmunks, then the squirrels. They work the water hole in the yard like regulars at a diner. A feral cat eats on the back roof. She pretends not to know us. My dog Dolce supervises the whole operation from my side. Outside the window is a protected stretch of woods. Some mornings, if the light is right, I see deer.

Our home is tucked into a canyon. It sits near the busiest freeway interchange on the planet. You can't hear any of it from here. The streets are too narrow for two cars. There are no sidewalks, so everything moves slow. My wife and I have spent eighteen years making it ours. We improve it a little more each season. It has become our refuge.

Thoreau went to the woods and built his cabin. I have been building mine for eighteen years, and I am still building it.

I have been at a computer since I was twelve. A Commodore 64 came into the house, and I never really logged off.

That kid turned working on a screen into a twenty-five-year career. I produced digital content for others.

Three years ago, I was busier than I had ever been. I had a full-time producing job. On nights and weekends, we sold a show to a network. Twenty-five years in the business. There is still no feeling like the yes.

I was also sick. The kind of sick you negotiate with. I managed the pain the way producers manage everything. I worked around the schedule. I relocated to Carolina for pre-production. I hired the crew. I built the plan. Then my body stopped negotiating.

I stepped away from my own show. My name stayed in the credits, but the production moved on without me. It took twelve months, three operations, and a long road back.

The Scan Room

The lowest day was the morning after the first surgery.

I lay in a cold SPECT scanning suite. The overhead fluorescent lights hummed. The air smelled of sterile plastic and metallic scrub soap. I stared at the giant circular scanner above me. In that quiet room, I understood how far away "back" actually was.

I had been here before, in a way.

Years ago, I co-created a show I loved. We built it for six years. We won an Emmy with the team. Then the company changed hands. A layoff swept me out. For two years, I watched the show change. It became something entirely different.

A credit is not a key. You can win the award, sign the contract, and see your name in the titles. You still do not hold the key. I spent a career confusing the two.

It was not just my work that had slipped away. It was my own name.

I have been part of every major data breach of the last fifteen years. The bank. The phone carrier. The social networks. For all of it, I received free credit monitoring. I got a handful of settlement checks. The largest check was seven dollars.

At one point, scammers ran a web-design racket under my name in Las Vegas. I filed the police reports. My name is still out there.

We trusted the banks, the carriers, and the platforms with the data of our whole lives.

A friend recommended Walden during my recovery. I read it alongside a book about digital detoxing. The two books formed a mirror. I did not enjoy looking into it.

So I initiated a purge. I deleted the social accounts. I stripped the noise down to the channels where I actually learn. For the first time, I treated my health like a production. I was the only stakeholder: body, mind, spirit.

I am stronger today than I have been in a decade. The walks got longer. Dolce set the pace.

The Workbench

The back office became the most honest room I have ever worked in.

I sit at the workbench where the soldering happens. The smell of hot rosin core solder rises from the iron. Small brass shavings litter the desk. On the top shelf sits a hollowed-out Macintosh SE from 1987. Two small computers live inside it. They are named after movie characters. They quietly do their jobs.

Everything I build now stays on my own hardware. It is not a philosophy. It is the paperwork.

The pond taught me one thing. It took two shows, three surgeries, and a seven-dollar check to learn it. Nobody is coming to steer for you. Not the network. Not the platform. Not the agencies.

The list of people who care about your heading is very small. A wife. A dog. A friend who hands you the right book. Everything else is current and wind.

There is a part of a ship most people never think about.

The rudder is small. It is a rounding error against the hull. It works underwater, where nobody sees it. It provides no power at all. But it decides where the ship goes.

For twenty-five years, I was an engine on other people's boats. A strong one. Engines get praised, photographed, and awarded. But an engine does not choose the heading. It pushes. Someone else steers.

When the boat turns into the rocks, the engine goes down too. If you do not choose your heading, someone else will. They will steer you into the rocks.

So that is what I am building. I work in the slow canyon mornings. I am building my own rudder. Something small. Something below the waterline, where nobody sees it. Something that holds the heading: my health, my work, my data, my story.

Here is the part I did not expect. The engine never went anywhere. Twenty-five years of horsepower does not evaporate. It just spent a career pushing toward other people's headings.

For the first time, the hand on the tiller is my own. All that power finally has somewhere to go.

I went into the woods to find the signal. I came back the kid at the keyboard. Except now, I build for myself. And the first thing a builder builds is the rudder.