The difference is subtle. One defines us by our age, while the other defines us for the future. One is dominated by developmental growth, while the other is defined by a growth of taste and intellect.

We’d expect one to come after the other. But sometimes, childhood and youth collide. Sometimes, we’re able to cherish simplicity while still moving forward. We capture the growth of childhood with the wildness of youth.

There are books that defy genre in this way. Rarely do those books end up on our children’s shelves.

Where the story does not just tweak the imagination, but is about imagination itself; where art is used as a bridge toward new worlds, where the most simple lines are delivered in a way that, generations later, authors can build upon them without losing the meaning. Without losing the feel of those monsters. Those wild things.

Childhood is about growing up, misbehaving, and understanding which boundaries can be broken. Youth is about taking those broken boundaries and learning how to use them. Without either, we have no art. We have no literature.

Where the Wild Things Are is as close to a perfect mix of childhood and youth as I’ve ever seen. What’s more, it’s a portal into the minds of my kids. Every day, I see a little bit of Max in their actions. Every day, I see it in their eyes. Every day, I remind myself that they’re kids, and they’re not being naughty – they’re being curious.

They’re moving away from childhood, and toward youth. They’re growing. Learning.

Thank you, Mr. Sendak. Thank you for standing up for the wild things. Every day.

“Please don’t go. We’ll eat you up, we love you so.”

RIP, Maurice Sendak.

Now, it’s different. I’m into them, and my kids are into them. But while they’re into the stories and the characters – Sierra, bless her soul, loves those damned Ewoks – I’m more interested in the story behind the story. The slow march from original trilogy to remastered trilogy to expanded trilogy to “Nooooooooooooo!”

Enter: Star Wars Begins.

Jamie Benning’s Star Wars Begins is a “filmumentary,” essentially, a Pop Up Video for the first Star Wars film. It was created a few years back – so before the recent Blu-Ray additions – and is a wonderful look at the story behind the making of and changes to the original film.

Turns out, this was the third filmumentary Jamie created. He began with The Empire Strikes Back in Building Empire, and moved forward to Return of the Jedi in Returning to Jedi.

Deleted scenes. Alternate takes. Bloopers. Commentary. Audio cues. Backstory. It’s all there. It’s all wonderful.

These were posted on YouTube last year, but were taken down for some reason. I’m linking to the Vimeo versions for posterity’s sake: I don’t want to lose these again.

Note: He’s begun his second trilogy by tackling Raiders of the Lost Ark (Raiding the Lost Ark).

At these times, 3:30 AM was merely a suggestion.

When I moved back to Sioux Falls, 3:30 AM became a time of peace. I worked late every night at a call center, and would spend an hour each night reading. It was wind-down time.

A few years later, when I had moved into a normal nine-to-five job, 3:30 AM shifted into a time of amazement. Those were the times I was awake in Sierra’s room – and later, in Isaac’s room – rocking them back to sleep, struck by the weight of their bodies, fighting not to nod off myself.

And then, 3:30 AM went away.

Until recently. Now, 3:30 AM is just the time I wake up with this asshole dog and take him outside.

*Sigh*

I miss the old 3:30 AM.

Behind me lay my bike, left behind in an awkward angle, its front wheel released from the frame and its front fork jammed into the grass. The reflector lay strewn across the parking lot. My friend, who shifted from laughing to not laughing to genuine concern, ran behind me, trying to catch up.

I would later recount the scene to my father, my mother, an admitting nurse and a reconstructive surgeon: I was a half block from my house when my wheel had come off my bike. I was riding down a hill. The fork of my bike came down first, and I went up and over. My face went into the concrete. Where I slid. Where I spent just fractions of a second, jarred, confused. Then: alive.

I was alive. But I wasn’t hurting. I wasn’t in pain.

I was scared shitless.

Not Knowing Enough To Know What You Don’t Know

The web moves quickly, and we struggle to run along with it. I was reminded of this at the recent IA Summit in New Orleans, where I found myself hanging out with a group of the weekend’s speakers. As we laughed and ate and drank and talked about anything but information architecture, I realized that these people knew each other from way back. I was lagging in both familiarity and experience.

And, as the weekend rolled on, I realized just how much I was lagging in knowledge. The people I had spend the weekend getting to know were all accomplished speakers who could engage in hour-long discussions on IA, while all I could do is sit back and soak it in. I walked into the conference expecting to learn more about information architecture. I never expected to leave learning just how much I didn’t know about the field.

Turns out, this isn’t rare. This shit happens all the time.

Here’s some dude walking into a meeting with his first big client. Here’s a new author who’s signed an agreement for her first book. Here’s a small-time strategist who’s been asked to speak intelligently with much smarter people about things that may or may not be over his head.

These situations are common. They are called “New Situations”,” as in “This is something you’ve never done before.” They are situations in which we are required to be on point, knowledgable and charming, lying through our teeth about our experience. At all times, we’re scared to be found out, which means we’re scared of being discovered as an amateur.

As if we didn’t all start as amateurs. As if we weren’t all scared when we started something new. The difference is whether we took that fear and used it to our advantage.

My Little Black Book

I collect fears like some collect phone numbers, storing them away for future correspondance. Each one is categorized by relationship, given its own avatar and recalled as the mood fits.

Here’s a section I like to call “Professional Disembowelment.” It’s filled with doubts. I met them all when I started writing, and they still threaten to tear me apart. There’s the Fear of Being Found Out. There’s the Fear of Hackitude. There’s the Fear of Speaking and Not Knowing What I’m Talking About. The gang’s all here, folks, and they’re ready to party.

Sometimes, I steal fears: “Will My Child Be Okay?” and “Am I As Big Of An Asshole As I Sometimes Seem?” are things I’ve seen manifest in close friends. “Will I Be Overweight Forever” was borrowed from the Mass Media Television Complex. “Am I A Good Husband/Father/Friend” was lifted from everyone, everywhere, ever.

We all have these little black books, where fears and anxieties collect and pool and begin choking on our ability to work and create and live. They stop circulation. As the pools become muddy and still, they continue to coalesce until we do something about them.

We can ignore them and watch as they silently take over. We can accept them and stay stagnant. We can confront them and learn from them.

I never delete a fear. I never know when I’ll need it again.

Here’s a Moral, I Guess

Without fear, I am nothing.

Without the fear of being left behind, not accepted by my peers, forced to live in the nerd I’ve imagined myself to be, I’d have never met any of my best friends. What’s more, I’d have never met Kerrie. I’d have never captured her heart. I’d have never learned to feed off of her strength.

Without being thrown into a new industry, forced to write by the seat of my patched-together pants, scared to death that a client was going to come back and ask why they had hired such a damned hack, I’d have never pushed myself to become better.

Without the fear that I’d be left out of something wonderful, I’d have never moved toward the web.

Without the fear that I’d be discovered as a fraud – scared shitless that I’d open a drawer and find a litter’s worth of rabbit feet, proving that everything from the past five years was an extended exercise in luck management – I wouldn’t keep fighting to learn more.

Where there’s fear, there’s consciousness. We don’t fear things we don’t care about. I am who I am because I’ve stopped fighting the uncomfortable. I’ve accepted fear as a necessary part of progress, separating it from anxiety, using it for good instead of for ulcers. I haven’t done anything special – nothing that we all can’t do. I just bucked up and accepted life. Accepted fear. Accepted progress.

Without the fear, I stand still. We all do. Fear is the next killer productivity app.

We Move On

It only took a few minutes to get to the emergency room. My mother arrived shortly after. I was bandaged, gauzed and cosmetically altered, my chin sewn together and swaddled in gauze.

I usually forget about the accident, but I’m often reminded of the scars. I can still feel the lump where my tooth punctured my lip. I can still see the white line on my chin that refuses to beard over.

I can still feel the impact. Every time I get on a bike. Every time I ride down a hill. Every time I wobble, my tire sticking in a curb or against a railroad track.

What’s more, I feel it every time Sierra gets on a bike in the backyard and starts riding in circles. I feel it every time Isaac, unaware of his own mortality, speeds down the sidewalk head first, feet dragging, full speed. It was my accident – my blood, and my shock – but I’ve saddled them with the repercussions. I hover over them, I coddle them, and I sometimes block the warm rays of carefree childhood.

When I was a kid, I was scared of people. I’ve never gotten over that; struggling against the undertow of introversion has become one of my pastimes. I hope that my kids will learn from my mistakes – that being scared is okay, that you SHOULD be scared, that you can’t progress without the fear of failure and the fear of mistakes and the fear of being discovered.

But they probably won’t. They can’t. They have to make their own mistakes. They will develop their own fears.

They will learn from them. They will become stronger. On their own. In time. With or without my help. Which means all I can do is hug them and comfort them and hope they learn their lesson long before I did.

I still remember United Airlines Flight 232 – the failed-landing-turned-fireball at the Sioux City airport. I was 10 years old. I watched footage on the nightly news in Jackson, WY, where I was spending the summer with my grandparents. The connection to a place that was just an hour away was not lost on my young mind.

The crash had little to do with the landing – it had to do with a rear engine failure and loss of flight controls. Regardless, every time I’m in an airplane – just seconds from touching down – I remember that crash. I remember the fireball. I remember the death toll.

I hate this. Because I’m smart enough to understand that we’re all mortal, and that fear only keeps us from living, and that air travel is nowhere near as dangerous as car travel. Air travel is nowhere near as dangerous as real life, to tell you the truth. I love airports, and I love the flights. I love it all.

Still.

The thunk of the landing gear. The pull as the plane starts to slow down. The fear. The memories – that fireball, that death toll. I always close my eyes. Because I’m supposed to. But also because I’m suddenly – and predictably - scared shitless.

Seconds later, it’s done. I brush it off. I go into the airport, once again amazed that I sat in a metal bird and defied physics.

Kerrie and I spent our honeymoon in New Orleans. We were stationed in the French Quarter. This was in 2003 – before the term “pre-Katrina” had any meaning. We were young. We spent a lot of time in bars. We had no children – no house payment, even. We were as free as New Orleans would allow us to be.

Nine years later – and despite the conference hotel being a mile away – I found myself wandering toward the French Quarter whenever I had a chance. There was never any purpose – just aimless wandering, walking through memories. Much of the area is still identical – little has changed in the Quarter over the past decade. Sheltered from the hurricanes, it lives on as a testament to New Orleans’ perseverance.

I expected to be disappointed. I’d built New Orleans to unrealistic expectations. I assumed I’d have the place all wrong – that New Orleans could barely live up to the image it creates for itself, let alone my own memories.

But every day I’d wake up with this longing. I wanted to go back into the city. I wanted to wander some more. I’d come across poverty, and run down buildings, and wonder why this wonderful city couldn’t get its shit together, and I’d turn the corner and see the lattice balconies and smell the best food in the world and remember that it’s to be expected. The city’s been knocked down enough times. At least let it get up before the 10 count.

When we got back from our honeymoon in 2003, I wrote a little narrative about our trip. It wasn’t great, but I found it mirrored my experience this weekend. It’s touched with the same sense of longing – and the same feelings of disgust. An exerpt:

The next morning, after running a few errands, we found ourselves standing in Louis Armstrong Park, located on the north side of Rampart Street: the “wrong side of the tracks” and the thin line between tourism and poverty. I was in a definite “bleeding heart” sort of mood, saddened to see what once could have been a majestic park, a historic land mark for one of Louisiana’s own sons, so out of maintenance, with murky pools, cracking asphalt, and a general air of dirtiness. I was, at the time, sort of disgusted that things could have become so worn out, that New Orleans could let itself get so run down.

But now, writing this, I realize that this isn’t just a solitary event, one that could be stopped and reversed, like a botox injection onto the dotted line at Rampart. This is New Orleans. And this is how New Orleans deals with itself. It’s a city that celebrates and clings to its history by allowing it to age – by letting those cracks and that dirt show up to the tourists. I have heard many people tell me that New Orleans is so dirty – so “vile” – and that, because of this, they didn’t really care for the Big Easy.

You know what? Those people are right. New Orleans is dirty. New Orleans is vile. New Orleans is somewhat incredulously without care. New Orleans is a city that never makes excuses for itself. It lets everything hang out, all of the inspired debauchery, the uneven streets, the garbage on the ground, and even the smell.

Everything is done its own way, as if New Orleans itself was turning to the rest of the metros – looking New York City and Los Angeles in the face — and flipping them the bird with one hand while holding a fifth of Phillips Rum in the other; the cousin from Louisiana that everyone is both embarrassed by and fascinated with.

I know now its mystery, though I could never start to understand it. I try to accept its fallacies. I embrace its undying quest to be the drunkest town on earth. It isn’t hard to imagine getting sucked into the history and charade of New Orleans.

It’s everywhere you look, in every gated doorway, around every rustic street plaque, under every iron lattice balcony. It’s at the bottom of the beer you drink while swapping stories with a local land owner. It’s in the neon signs that line the French Quarter at night. Everyone gets sucked in. That’s the whole point of New Orleans.

What takes time to develop is an appreciation for the legend of New Orleans. An appreciation that, no matter how dirty, or unorthodox, or insanely confusing it gets, New Orleans is in control – and always has been. There’s nothing that has happened that she doesn’t know, and, thankfully for everyone who has experienced a few minutes of uninhibited Louisiana pleasure, she never tells a soul. Orleans never shares a secret.

And New Orleans has a lot of secrets.

My feelings haven’t changed a bit. I love that city, even if all I wanted to do after the first two days was come home. I love it in spite of itself.

It was never released. But it was found – in a bookstore in Alnwick, England: Barter Books.

In the end, the poster was never officially issued, and it remained unseen by the public, until a copy turned up more than 50 years later. It was found in a second-hand bookshop called Barter Books in the northeast corner of England.

Barter books was begun in 1991 by a couple: Stuart and Mary Manley. They building used to be an old Victorian railway station. Huge rows of stacked shelves now stand in place where the tracks would have been, but the stations old tea rooms and waiting rooms are still there.

It was in 2000 that Stuart found the poster in a box of dusty old books that had been bought at auction. Mary liked it so much she had it framed and put it up near the shop till, and it proved so popular with the customers that a year later they began to sell copies.

I had the opportunity to visit Barter Books in 2000 while I was visiting Kerrie during her study abroad semester in Alnwick, England. When I envision the perfect bookstore, Barter Books is what comes to mind. To have this story connected to something I hold so dear – and, to be honest, something I still think of as my little secret – is wonderful.

Via Kottke.org.

We publish because we want to be seen. And there’s a fear in that. For isntance, my routine is pretty standard: I write a blog post or an article, I hit “publish,” and I run for cover. I release my thoughts and, within seconds, wonder what I’ve left out of place. We all do this, I suspect. If you’re a writer and you don’t have these moments of doom, I don’t trust you. You’re obviously a robot.

We’re afraid we might be wrong – that we’ve forgotten something, or that we’ve completely missed the point. Writing is fear, and that’s what fuels the rush of hitting “publish”.

But, what if?

What if that dread was gone, if we wrote like we build, one step at a time, publishing our final drafts and then adapting those final drafts as new . What if the “final draft” was no longer a THING, and we only worked with “deployment.” What if the fear of getting things wrong was diluted by the understanding that, yes, we can change this thing we just wrote and, yes, that is completely okay with the world?

Mandy Brown writes in her most recent Contents follow-up, “Deploy”:

“How many times have you written something, published it, and then realized in retrospect that what you thought you said was not in fact what came through? (Even if you’ve never done this yourself, you’ve certainly witnessed it in others.) What if you could revise a work after publishing it, and release it again, making clear the relationship between the first version and the new one. What if you could publish iteratively, bit by bit, at each step gathering feedback from your readers and refining the text. Would our writing be better?”

This is the second time this week I’ve read about our insistance in a final draft – in the great reveal – and how it’s being overtaken by the idea of gradual deployment. I first caught it in Robin Sloan’s 2009 essay from The New Liberal Arts, “Iteration,” which says,

“Making things is a circle. You start the arc with an idea about the world: an observation or hunch. Then you sprint around the track, getting to a prototype — a breadboard, a rough draft, a run-through—as fast as you can. Your goal isn’t to finish the thing. It’s to expose it, no matter how rough or ragged, to the real world. You do that, and you learn: Which of your ideas were right? Which were wrong? What surprised you? What did other people think? Then you plow those findings back into an improved prototype. Around the circle again. Run!”

I write for two reasons these days: I write for myself as some sort of leisure, where I explore the things that are interesting to me, and I write for my job, where I help others develop the processes they’ll need to be successful on the web.

When I write for myself, I slam it out and post it. There is one iteration: the final one.

When I write for my job, I employ a process. There is no end. There is only “what’s next.” When I hand the project off to the client, my work doesn’t end – it’s designed to keep moving forward, even after I’ve stopped actually writing words and speaking to the client.

There are iterations, and the client is expected to keep the documents and theories alive.

I still write for a finished product, because that’s what I was taught. But the technology I have access to allows me to move toward something less concrete – and, ultimately, more in line with language itself: shifting, adapting and changing, all while keeping honest the history of the words.

There’s draft and there’s published. We should fight to be somewhere in between. The question is if the method to reaching that hazy middle-ground forces us to abandon the biggest thrill of publication: the rush of the big reveal.

Or maybe that’s just it; maybe, just maybe, the big reveal is already dead.

SIERRA: “What are the names of these teams, daddy?”
COREY: “These are the Knicks and the Mavericks.”
SIERRA: “Which team has the giant basketball, daddy?”
COREY: “That’s the Knicks. The Knicks have a giant basketball logo.”
SIERRA: “Oh, I LOVE the Knicks, daddy.”
COREY: “Daddy doesn’t like the Knicks. The Knicks sometimes beat daddy’s favorite team.”
SIERRA: “Don’t you like the white clothes teams?”
COREY: “Well, you see, I sometimes like the white clothes teams. The teams that wear white are the teams that are playing at home. Like, when the Sioux Falls Skyforce play at home, they wear white jerseys. Today, the Knicks played in New York, so they wore white. So I like the white teams sometimes, when the Celtics play at home. And sometimes I like the green team, when the Celtics are playing somewhere else.”
SIERRA: “…”
SIERRA: “Look at my giraffe.”

Sometimes, I’d post my workout playlist and call it “Steinbeck on Steroids.” And, since I just ran a continuous five kilometers for the first time in my life, I thought I’d do it again.

The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy for the Devil”
Lily Allen – “LDN”
Pinback – “Non-Photo Blue”
Snapcase – “Harrison Bergeron”
Hot Water Music – “No Division
Bad Religion – “Atomic Garden”
Gorillaz – “Clint Eastwood”
Black Flag – “Six Pack”
Rage Against the Machine – “Bulls on Parade”

This won’t be a habit. I refuse to become “writes about running all the time” person. I promise.