Zen Den

The Zen Den. With a camera looking at you the whole time.

Heyyy. It has been MONTHS since I worked on a synth design, or built a module, or even soldered anything at all. I miss it so much.

This picture here is how Juanito's Secret Ex-Workshop looks now. After the jump, you'll see what it looked like when it was Juanito's Secret Workshop.

It's a glorious disaster

I miss it. Lots. I'm an engineer more than anything. A probably apocryphal story: a successful author was asked by a fan "How do I become a writer?" The imaginary author said, imaginarily, "You're a writer when you can't not write."

I feel that, but for me it's not writing, it's designing or building something electronic or mechanical. I feel not-well when I go too long without creating something. Fixing cars or working on something kinda boring like sawing wood will help me feel somewhat better, but oh boy, designing a synthesizer module, getting the PCBs, and building it into a completed (working????) module feeds my soul.

Here's what happened. I work overnights in a residential facility for kids. We have two cinder-block rooms that used to be used as seclusion rooms, places we used to toss -- sometimes literally -- children, and leave them by themselves behind the locked door for hours, sometimes many hours. It was a neglectful practice, and I'm glad we don't do it anymore. One of the rooms was totally unused, so I slowly took it over as Juanito's Secret Workshop. Well, all my work areas become chaotic messes, which is what happened with Juanito's Secret Workshop, and eventually my boss was like "hey we need to use that room for something. Get your stuff out."

So I did, with a heavy heart. A lot of junk got tossed. The rest got organized, labelled, and packed into containers. I measured the containers, and designed and built Juanito's Secret Mobile Workstation, which is almost done. The weather keeps betraying me, so it's just a sunny day away from being sanded, finished, wired up, and ready to bring to work.

Next week, probably. Next week I'll be able to once again be able to BUILD MY MODULES oh boy I miss it so much. Designing and building the Secret Mobile Workstation has fed my hunger, but only a little bit. I've been spending so much time at work (where I am now) just....... watching movies..... ewwwwwww. Boring. Well..... I did watch Jurassic Park. Great movie.