Michael Brooks

“Sometimes fear does not subside and you must do it afraid.”

– Elisabeth Elliot

If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:

• I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people

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My heart breaks for would-be homeowners priced out of housing markets across the country. We need to do something to bring the price of all houses down, except the house I own and plan to sell for one (or many) million dollars.

People deserve to buy a home at a price they can afford, a price that will somehow also cover my entire initial investment,... See more

Creativity: “I can’t get new ideas staring at a blank page. Creativity, for me, requires motion. When you go on a walk, you can turn your world into an idea-generating sensorium, and ideas will spring up from the most unlikely sources. There is one thing that’s absolutely certain about creativity: It’s an active process, not a passive one. The best... See more

That is, to me, everything is fair game. (If something powerful and negative exists in the world and we don’t write about it, what is writing for?)