Sketch to Reality

I have a library of notebooks scattered throughout the house but, mostly, on a bookshelf in our bedroom. I'm always carrying one of these notebooks so I can jot down ideas and to sketch these ideas. These notebooks are filled with sketches, lists and sometimes inane musings.

Since my illness developed about 18 years ago, my mind can be a bit scattered so I found that a notebook was my friend when it comes to organizing my thoughts and remembering these thoughts. I started having difficulty remembering things and, cognitively, I was struggling with a lot of small projects. My notebooks were and have been a powerful tool in helping me accomplish a lot of projects in recent years.

Truth be told, I've always kept notebooks filled with my sketches and ideas. I have notebooks from decades ago filled with sketches and notes of home improvement projects and jobs, boats, airplanes, aerospace concepts, and homes I've designed and built. Back then, these notebooks were just a place for me to start working through a problem or idea. Since my illness took control of my life, these notebooks have become a valuable tool and a sort of catalog of ideas and thoughts to help me actually sort things out and accomplish things while still struggling with my illness.

When I think back on when this idea of carrying around notebooks started, it takes me all the way back to time spent with my dear old Gramps. 

I spent a lot of one-on-one time with Gramps while I was in college (as well as with a few other elder relatives). I sometimes went to work with my grandfather in Manhattan. I certainly spent a lot of time at his house on a bay on the south shore of Long Island. We spent a lot of time together, one on one. We built docks together... we repaired things around his house... we would sometimes work on his big mahogany cabin cruiser... we even designed and built a bedroom and loft in my uncle's Brooklyn apartment which was converted from a big brick commercial building with towering ceilings. No matter what we tackled together, Gramps would always pull out a notebook or a piece of folded paper from his pocket with sketches he drew showing what he had in mind. At the time, I was in college pursuing a degree in engineering so this is something that always stuck with me. I liked when Gramps would begin to excitedly explain something he had in mind which always would prompt a question of "how?"... he would then pull out a sketch and some notes in response. He always seemed to have a plan. I liked that. 

Needless to say, I still continue to carry a notebook no matter where I go today. It is always tucked inside my camera bag right next to my Surface tablet and I never go anywhere without my camera bag. I've thought about foregoing my notebooks and simply creating the same notebooks digitally using my Surface tablet and pen. For me, however, something gets lost when attempting to lay out my ideas through the cold glass of my tablet. It just isn't the same... it doesn't feel the same... the end product doesn't look the same. Someday, I will probably go digital and store all future notebooks in my tiny, lightweight tablet but, for now, I still carry around a physical spiral-bound notebook no matter where I go. Incidentally, I use digital technology for just about everything else in life. 

If you follow this blog fairly regularly, you probably have already seen some of these sketches and the resulting projects I've completed by using these sketches and ideas jotted down in my notebooks. More recently, I had jotted down some ideas about getting potable water to our proposed outdoor kitchen. We want a new indoor kitchen but I first must build an outdoor grilling kitchen for two reasons... first, we want an outdoor grilling kitchen to use year-round for grilling, and second, we need a place to be able to cook while I am renovating our indoor kitchen. I have almost all of that project sketched onto the pages of two notebooks mixed in between all sorts of other projects, ideas and lists. I've already bought the large grill, sink, faucet, lighting, and some of the hardware and lumber. The latest focus has been on getting potable water out to the outdoor grilling kitchen so I've needed to come up with a plan for some plumbing parts to meet our needs that are suitable for potable water.

I really do love it when I create a sketch at home (actually, we were probably at the hospital since that is where most of our time is spent since last summer) and then I somehow manage to create an exact replica of what I had in my scattered mind. 

Quite often, the plan adapts and evolves as I refine the design or as I attempt to build my idea. I'm a firm believer that everything in life should evolve over time and my designs are no exception. Most often, I usually come across some design flaw or I refine something that was either a little fuzzy in my mind when I first sketched it or I found a way to improve upon it so the plan changes. On very rare occasions, I happen to sketch an idea that comes out so close to the original sketch that I find it a bit exciting! 

When I placed this heavy hunk of brass plumbing next to my original sketch, I smiled and said to myself, "I love it when a plan comes together!" There is just something about this that warms my heart and makes me smile. Perhaps it is the realization of good planning combined with decades of experience or perhaps it is simply the memory of dear old Gramps and a part of him still evolving within me... through me. 

Lately, it seems our plans are constantly changing as priorities are changed, voluntarily as well as involuntarily. Everything evolves and this is a good thing. Life would be boring and stuck in an ever-deepening rut otherwise. But when a finished product looks exactly like my original concept sketch, sometimes it is the simplest things like a rough concept sketch matching the finished product that I find exciting. Then I remember where and when I picked up this notebook idea and I'm reminded that, in some ways, Gramps is still helping me out today and that is a nice thought too.

In this one rough sketch and the identical finished product, I see dear old Gramps pulling out a sketch of one of his ideas... I see evolution... I see a plan coming together... and it puts a smile on my face.