Things I Never Finished
I have these projects I keep returning to. They don’t earn anything, and no one’s waiting for me to finish them. I drop them for years at a time. I don’t think of them as goals. They just feel like part of who I am.
Chôros No. 1
In my twenties, I was taking classical guitar classes in Berkeley. We meandered in my lessons—my teacher was a jazz guitarist and I practiced a few hours a week. At some point, he played Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 1 and it really hit for me. It was complex, rhythmic, and different. I really wanted to play it. I still do.
Two decades later, I’ve picked it up and put it down more times than I can count. I’ve never made it all the way through. But that piece still lives in the background of my life. It’s not a goal in the way work goals are—it’s more like a picture on the wall. A thing I reach for when I’m rested, quiet, and ready to feel something again.
I’ve become a member of Classical Guitar Corner, which is full of others like me—many retired, all dreaming of playing guitar like Julian Bream.
Houdini
In my 20s, I was fascinated by early web-based 3D like VRML. I even made a little startup called immerzion, which did 3D postcards—kind of a miniature Second Life. In my late 30s, I picked up Blender and Unity while teaching kids to code, but the focus was on their learning, not mine.
Then, during COVID, when MV Code Club shut down, I had time to explore Houdini. It was a great mix of math, programming, and art. I was excited by it because you could make Hollywood-style VFX or just weird, beautiful procedural art.
It brought together everything I love—procedural modeling, simulations, systems thinking, linear algebra. And like with guitar, I’ll never master it. But it gives me something to think about when I see work like the opening credits to Severance, which were at least partially done in Houdini
Even now, with AI rapidly automating 3D workflows, it doesn’t bother me. It actually makes the time I spend doing it manually more meaningful. I’m not doing it to ship anything. I’m doing it because it pulls at me.
Drawing My Hand
I took drawing classes in my early 20s at San Francisco State. Charcoal, figure studies, perspective. But what I really wanted was to be able to sketch landscapes in a Moleskine using ink. I never got good at it. Still haven’t. I haven’t developed the patience.
But there’s this exercise I learned—point your fingers at yourself and try to draw them in perspective, learning foreshortening. I was doing that on a plane once, and my daughter, maybe 7 or 8 at the time, watched me and started trying it too. She didn’t say anything. I think it frustrated her, but she never let on. She just kept at it, quietly.
Years later, as a teen, she showed me a sketchbook she’d been keeping. Her drawings were expressive, subtle. She had a strong sense of shading, perspective, and proportion.
I never got good at drawing. But just by trying, I gave her something that stuck. Maybe that’s a different kind of success.
Why Bother?
None of these projects are finished. Some of them I haven’t touched in years. They make no money. I work on them when I’m tired, distracted, or burnt out. And yet, they feel important.
They’re a counterbalance to work. They remind me that not everything has to scale, or ship, or lead to something else. They remind me to stay curious. To be bad at things. To keep going anyway.