Making as a Way of Living

I don’t remember when making stopped being a project and started feeling like a way of staying alive.

Somewhere along the line, creating slipped out of the tidy boxes—career, hobby, side thing—and became something closer to breathing. Music, design, writing, code. Different dialects of the same language. Different ways of asking the same questions. Different paths back to the same pulse.

I’ve never been very good at choosing just one thing. I want to learn everything. Maybe because I’ve had to. Maybe because curiosity is its own kind of hunger. Probably both.

The Drive for Independence

At first, learning new mediums felt practical. Survival-adjacent. If I could record my own music, design my own website, write my own words, build my own tools—then I wouldn’t have to wait. I wouldn’t need permission. I wouldn’t need to ask.

Independence, I told myself. Self-sufficiency. A noble thing.

But tucked inside that drive was something quieter and less flattering: the fear of being a burden. The belief that needing help somehow diminished the work—or me.

I’m still unlearning that.

Still learning how to ask. Still learning how to let someone see the scaffolding, not just the finished structure. Still learning that doing everything alone is not the same thing as being strong.

The Power of Collaboration

Because here’s the inconvenient truth: every time I’ve shared something unfinished, someone has met me there.

Not with judgment—but with care. With ideas. With their own unfinished things laid gently beside mine.

That’s what Pulse COOP is.

A creative tech cooperative we co-founded—not to chase scale or perfection, but to make room. To build things together. To hold each other steady while we try. It’s less about pooling skills and more about redistributing weight. Less hustle, more shared breath.

A refusal of the myth that meaningful work must be lonely.

Finding Balance

So yes—I’m still learning new tools. Still bouncing between sound and color and code. Still trying to stitch memory, rhythm, and interface into something that feels honest.

But I’m also learning to pause. To invite collaboration. To leave the door open instead of locking myself inside with my ambition.

I’m learning that independence doesn’t have to mean isolation.

And that asking for help—done gently, honestly—can be its own kind of making.