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

The printers are humming tonight.

The laser is finally quiet after finishing a customer order, and there's still enough coffee left in the pot for another cup.

Those are good times to think.

The other day someone asked me what my retirement plans were.

I knew what they meant, but the question made me smile.

Not because I had a great answer.

Because a few years ago I didn't think retirement was something I was ever going to have.

I thought retirement meant working until I died.

That probably sounds a little dramatic, but if you've ever spent years just trying to survive, you might understand.

There was a time when grocery shopping meant figuring out which package was cheapest by the ounce. There wasn't much room for dreaming about retirement when you were trying to make sure next month's bills got paid.

Life isn't like that anymore.

I'm thankful for that.

But I've learned something about surviving.

Even after your circumstances change, your thoughts don't always change with them.

They still travel back there sometimes.

These days I know exactly how long I have until I can retire with full benefits.

Seven years and nine months.

Not because I'm counting the days until I can stop working.

Because for the first time in my life, retirement feels like something that's actually out there waiting for me.

The funny part is that retirement doesn't look anything like I thought it would.

Seven months ago I had never touched a laser.

Six months ago I had never even seen a 3D printer.

If someone had told me that I'd spend my evenings designing ornaments, running printers, talking to customers at craft shows, and learning CAD software, I probably would have laughed.

Yet here I am.

Somewhere in those seven months, Dwolfdragon Designs stopped being just another idea.

It became part of how I imagine the future.

People sometimes ask if the business is my retirement plan.

Maybe.

I certainly hope that someday it grows strong enough to stand on its own without needing my full-time job to support it.

But even if it never does...

It has already given me something I never expected.

It gave me permission to become a beginner again.

I forgot how much fun that could be.

Learning my laser software and the laser's quirks.

Trying to understand why a print failed.

Designing something that looked so much better in my imagination than it did on the laser bed or the 3D printer.

Starting over.

Figuring it out.

Trying again.

I don't think I realized how much I missed learning something completely new.

For years, retirement was something I imagined happening after life.

Now I think it's becoming part of life.

Not because I want to stop working.

Because I want the freedom to spend more of my time making things, meeting people at craft shows, learning new skills, and seeing where curiosity leads me next.

Will Dwolfdragon Designs get me there?

I honestly don't know.

I hope so.

But I've become comfortable saying, "I don't know."

Those four words have opened more doors for me than pretending I already had the answers ever did.

Maybe that's what changed over the last seven months.

I didn't just buy a laser.

I found hope again.

Not the loud kind.

Not the kind that says everything will work out exactly the way I planned.

Just the quiet kind.

The kind that whispers,

"Maybe the next chapter is going to be pretty interesting."

The printers are still humming.

I think the coffee's getting cold.

If you're building something of your own, I'd enjoy hearing about it someday.

Pull up a chair.

I'll put on a fresh pot.

The Have To and the Want To

For as long as I can remember, there has been a "Have To."

I just didn't always call it that.

The Have To is pretty simple.

I have to get up when the alarm goes off.

I have to go to work.

I have to pay the bills.

I have to be responsible for the people who depend on me.

I have to do the things life requires, because for a long time it never felt like there was another option.

The Have To wasn't something I resented.

It was just... life.

There was a Want To, too.

But for years it lived somewhere else

.

In dreams.

In "someday."

In all those conversations that start with, "If I ever get the chance..."

The funny thing is, I don't know when I started calling them the Have To and the Want To.

Maybe it happened when the Want To finally stopped feeling impossible.

For a lot of years, I had an image in my head that I used whenever someone asked how life was going.

I told them it felt like being at the bottom of a well.

You'd struggle.

Claw your way up the sides.

Finally see daylight.

And just before you reached the top, something would shove you back down and start filling the hole in above you.

It wasn't that life was hopeless.

It just felt like every step forward came with two steps back.

When that's the life you're living, the Have To is all there is.

You don't spend much time thinking about the Want To because the Have To demands all your attention.

Somewhere along the way, that changed.

Not overnight.

There wasn't one magical day when everything suddenly became easy.

Life just got... better.

Little by little.

I found myself with enough room to imagine something beyond getting through the week.

That's when Dwolfdragon Designs stopped being an idea and became something I could actually build.

Not because I expected it to replace my full-time job.

Not because I had some grand business plan.

Because I finally had room for a Want To.

Today, the Have To is still there.

Every weekday morning, the alarm still goes off.

I still make the drive.

I still clock in.

That part of my life hasn't disappeared.

The difference is what waits for me afterward.

Now there are printers humming in the workshop.

Lasers waiting for the next design.

Planning for the next event.

Conversations with customers.

Projects that only existed in my imagination a few days earlier.

There are evenings when I lose track of time because I'm making something simply to see if I can.

The Have To pays for the lights in the shop.

The Want To is why I smile when I turn them on.

I don't know if the Want To will ever become the Have To.

Maybe one day Dwolfdragon Designs will stand on its own.

Maybe it won't.

Strangely, that isn't the most important part anymore.

The important part is that the Want To is no longer waiting for "someday."

It's happening now.

Maybe only a few hours at a time.

Maybe squeezed in between work, errands, and everything else life asks of me.

But it's real.

And after spending so many years believing there was only one path...

That feels like a pretty remarkable thing.