Dwolf the What If Squirrel

Hey there. Come on in.

Watch your step.

There’s a squirrel running around the shop.

He’s been here for quite a while, although these days he has a name.

Dwolf.

Dwolf is my What If Squirrel.

He usually shows up when I’m working on something perfectly reasonable.

I’ll be trying to solve a problem or working through a design when suddenly...

What if we changed this?

Oh, wait.

If we did that, then we could do this.

That sounds cool.

But what if instead...

And there goes the squirrel.

One of the first products I started designing for myself was a 3D printed NFC business card.

Simple enough.

At least that was the plan.

Then the squirrel showed up.

What if it were a different shape?

What if we added a base so it could stand on a table?

If it can stand on a table, could we make something larger?

What about bookends?

What about wall signs?

What if I made it a parametric generator so I could work more efficiently.

Before long, one little NFC business card had wandered into an entire family of things I hadn't planned on making.

That's pretty normal around here.

In fact, if I look around the shop today, probably 99% of the products I make started somewhere with two words.

What if?

I've learned not to ignore those moments.

That doesn't mean every squirrel gets to take over the day.

Some squirrels show up and happen to be headed in exactly the direction I'm already going.

Those we follow.

Some have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm working on, but they're interesting enough that I don't want to lose them.

Those go into the squirrel cage.

Not a real cage.

Although, now that I think about it...

No.

See?

That's how this happens.

Anyway.

The squirrel cage is where we put ideas that aren't worth chasing right now, but might be worth following later.

Because unfollowed squirrels have a bad habit of disappearing.

Especially the 2 a.m. variety.

You know the one.

You wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that seems absolutely brilliant.

Why didn't I think of this before?

You'll remember it in the morning.

Of course you will.

Two hours later you wake up again and remember that the squirrel stopped by.

You just can't remember what he looked like.

Those are frustrating.

Then there are the squirrels we release back into the woods.

We chased one for adding hitch-cover features to the product generator I've been building.

It sounded useful.

Except I already had a perfectly good way to make hitch covers, they weren't exactly flying off the table at shows, and adding more complexity to the generator wasn't going to solve a problem I actually had.

Back to the woods with you.

That's something I've had to learn about squirrels.

Following one doesn't mean you have to keep it.

Sometimes you follow a squirrel off the path and discover a beautiful glade you never knew was there.

Sometimes you wander around for a while until the squirrel disappears and you're left wondering what exactly you were doing in the woods.

And sometimes the squirrel eventually leads you back to the original path, just a little farther along than where you left it.

I'm okay with all three.

Because the chase is usually fun.

“The squirrel”, has always been a running joke.

Whether I was working on a project or just having a conversation, some random what if thought would appear and send things off in another direction.

It always reminded me of my dog happily playing in the yard.

Chase the ball.

Get the ball.

Bring back the ball.

Oh, look. A squirrel.

What ball?

It became a regular part of design and planning conversations. Whenever whoever I was talking to realized we’d wandered off on a tangent, I would laugh and say,

“Look, squirrel.”

Then one day, while working on a new project to create some maker-humor plaques, the squirrel showed up in the concept art.

Nobody planned for him to be there.

That seemed appropriate. He’d been part of the conversations from the beginning anyway.

So I decided he could stay.

For a long time he was simply “the squirrel.”

Then one day, during a conversation with my friend, he inadvertently referred to the squirrel as “Dwolf.”

Well...

That was that.

The squirrel had a name.

Then we decided he was enough of a regular around the shop that he should be included deliberately.

The humor art.

His own plaque on the wall.

Maybe as part of the official logo someday.

And he is definitely getting his name on the shop door.

I suppose I could look at all these squirrels as distractions.

Maybe sometimes they are.

They certainly aren't efficient.

But efficiency isn't always how interesting things get made.

Sometimes you need to stay on the path and finish what you started.

Sometimes you need to put the squirrel in the cage and promise you'll come back later.

Sometimes you need to wave goodbye and let him disappear into the woods.

And sometimes...

You follow him.

Just to see where he goes.

Dwolf the What If Squirrel happily lives here.

I think I'll keep him