You thought this was going to be one of those Welcome, we’re so glad you’re here pages, didn’t you?
Well, I’m glad you’re here. I suppose. But I’m wondering why you’re here. There’s a lot of crap out here on the internet, and the chance of you getting to this site is probably something like 1 in 8.5 billion to 16.4 billion.
That’s how many searches Google handles on any given day. So yeah, I feel lucky to have you drop by, but I also wonder why you’re here. This site is about where ideas come from, how innovation starts, how the mind operates, and, Lordy, what it comes up with. So I wonder why you’re here because you had to have had something in your mind when you went Googling.
Care to share it?
I’m serious. What were you looking for?
You didn’t get out of bed this morning thinking, I believe I’ll go find an 84-year-old old git in Florida and let him poke around inside my head. At least I hope you didn’t. That would worry me a little.
You were looking for something. Maybe an answer. Maybe an idea. Maybe you were bored. Maybe somebody sent you here, in which case you may need to have a talk with that person. But something happened before you arrived. You had a question, a problem, an irritation, a curiosity, or some half-formed damned thing you couldn’t quite put a name to.
And now you’re here. I call that an Encounter.
I didn’t invent the word, obviously. But I’ve become interested in what happens when one thing bumps into another thing. An idea into a problem. Something you remember into something you just saw. An old experience into a new situation. You into this website.
Most of the time, nothing happens, but many times something does, and that’s where things get interesting.
I’ve had 84 years, soon to be 85, but who’s counting, to accumulate stuff in my head. Some of it useful. Some of it ridiculous. Some of it apparently sat around for fifty years waiting for something else to show up. I’ve been a farm kid, soldier, radio and television wannabe, restaurant operator, commercial lender, salesman, inventor, and several other things that seemed sensible at the time.
For years I thought my ideas were mine.
Now I’m not so sure.
The more I’ve gone rummaging backward through my own life, the more other people’s fingerprints I find on the damned things. Something somebody said. Something I saw. A machine I took apart. A problem in a restaurant. A television promotion. A bank customer. Something that didn’t work. Something that worked when it had no business working.
So here’s where you and I may have our first argument.
You probably don’t know where your ideas came from either.
You think you do. Your mind gives you a perfectly respectable story: I had this problem, I thought about it, and I came up with this idea.
Bullshit.
Well, maybe not bullshit. That’s what we’re here to find out.
I’m not particularly interested in teaching you how to be creative. There are plenty of people on the internet who will sell you seven steps for that, probably with a workbook and a limited-time offer if you act before midnight.
I’m more interested in what you’ve already got.
You’ve got a lifetime of things you’ve seen, learned, forgotten, misunderstood, loved, hated, built, broken, wanted, abandoned, and occasionally wondered about. Most of it isn’t sitting neatly in your head labeled RAW MATERIAL FOR YOUR NEXT GREAT IDEA.
But it’s there.
And something brought you here.
So before I tell you any more about me, let’s go back to the question you thought I was asking just to be friendly.
Why are you here?
What were you looking for in the five minutes before you found Gitland? What problem were you trying to solve? What were you curious about? What idea have you been carrying around that everybody else thinks is nuts?
Tell me. Don’t make it pretty. I don’t particularly want pretty, because if you’ve got an idea, I’ve got 84 years of accumulated junk to compare it to.
My thinking is bigger. Show me yours, unless you’re afraid to.