"Well, you've got two choices. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way."

--Dr. Saunders, pediatrician, before giving me every shot I ever had as a child.

I don't remember Dr. Saunders very well. For some reason he looks kind of like Orville Redenbacher in my recollections of him. He also had a big, brusk nurse who must have modeled for Nurse Ratched at some point. He was an old man when he said these words to me. He was a young man when he said them to my mother for the first time. He was her pediatrician too. 

What I do remember about him was this saying. I think about it often.  I always chose the hard way, which involved a bear hug from Big Nurse, tears, and a lot of evasive squirming. I haven't really changed much as I've grown up. While I can now take a booster shot like a champ I still find myself choosing to do things the hard way.

I try not to judge. Some people are good at the easy way. I'd probably produce a lot more. I'd probably be less busy, work at a different job, and stress out a lot less. I don't think I would be very satisfied.

Somewhere in me there is a deep conviction that for every solution there is one right answer. I can't figure out what that right answer is until I've seen all the wrong answers. When I'm designing something new I have to spend an unconscionable amount of time creating God awful, over-designed messes before I get so tired of thinking about it that I just cut out all of the unnecessary crap.  Suddenly I'm left with the right answer, the bare bones of the idea, and I'm always surprised and annoyed by how simple of a solution it ended up being. 

This is why I hand stitch everything. It's stronger. It looks better. It's the right way. This is also why I hand dye everything instead of buying already dyed sides of leather. Because if I dye it myself I can control the color and make it look the way I think it should look. Make it look right. This is why I've spent months and months trying to formulate my own dye rather than sticking to the store bought stuff when store bought works just fine.  By making my own I can control it better. I can be sure that I'm not spreading harmful chemistry onto something that people touch everyday. I can make it from locally sourced ingredients. I can make it naturally. I can do it the right way.

I've never figured out if the hard way is the right way, or if I'm just taking the hard way to get to the right answer.  I know that when I find the right answer it comes with a feeling of conviction. I know that in all the time I've spent learning from the wrong ways I've built a foundation for something that may not be perfect (nothing ever is) but is on the right path.  I feel like it takes all the little right pieces from all the wrong answers to build something that is right.

So I might always be the Tortoise and not the Hare. I might miss out on some perceived opportunities because I'm being stubborn. I probably spend more hours being frustrated and less hours sleeping than I should. In the end I'll always choose the hard way with the right answer. That is good enough for me.

I use to spend a lot of time worrying about people stealing my ideas. In fact there are a lot of things I have missed out on because I spent so much time sheltering my good ideas that I never got to use them. I have only recently come to understand that this is not only harmful but pointless. If you have a successful idea people are going to steal it.

So why did I stop worrying about this. It is because I embraced an idea called "gesture". Gesture is an art school term for how an artist manipulates their material. Jackson Pollok had a frenetic gesture. Van Gogh had a very heavy one. The way I think of gesture is like terroir for people. It is the combination of personality, environment, technique, materials, limitations and emotions that create a "youness" in what you make.  I feel that learning to identify your gesture and then develop it is the single best thing you can do for yourself and your business.

It can be really hard to focus on this. We live in a society that values innovation. It seems like everyone is trying to come up with the next big idea. The problem with this plan is that as soon as you put that new idea out there, people will begin to replicate it, and suddenly it's not that big of an idea anymore.  I think it is more important to spend your time thinking about how to develop your gesture. 

Take DaVinci. You could spend your whole life trying to be DaVinci. You cloud learn his techniques, replicate his materials, move to Italy, buy a fancy hat, and paint similar subjects as DaVinci, but he'll trump you every time. That is because he could paint something that any stranger could walk past and say "that looks like a DaVinci." It's not because of his technique, his materials, his subjects, or his location but because of all of these things plus the unique thing that made DaVinci different from everyone else. 

When I am making a wallet (I'm seriously not trying to compare myself to DaVinci here) I try to think about all of the subconscious gestures I make while creating it. I'm left handed. I work in a poorly lit basement. I'm probably listening to music. I apply dye clockwise. I always start at the front and work my way back. I like it when the dye doesn't apply evenly.  I'm going to use a natural finish rather than acrylic. If I were to take just one of these, say uneven dye, and try to capitalize on it I might be successful for a moment, but other people would catch on eventually and I'd be out of luck.

Finding your gesture can be really hard and worse yet, it can't be forced. The only way to find it is examine how you do things and why you do them. Continually ask yourself what works for you and reenforce that. Work that really speaks of you is something that can never be copied. I think that this is the real value behind an item that is handmade.