Most everything I know, I know because I took something apart.

I mean that literally: I've cut and I've unscrewed and I've pried and I've desoldered to get inside electronics and appliances. And I mean it figuratively: I read the source code for web pages to build my own, I've deconstructed writing to make myself better at it, I've mapped entire audio stories with pen and paper to understand how to assemble them myself.

If I want to really understand something, I have to understand all the pieces that went into making it come together.

It used to be that the easiest way to learn how to make a webpage was simply to view the source code of a page, learn to read it, and build your own. That's how I learned to make things on the web, and how I've continued to improve at it over the decades since. Even as the web itself has gotten more complicated, open source projects, like the one I use to build this site, still offer an onramp to understanding.

The first time I printed a book overseas (Jay Ryan's 100 Posters, 134 Squirrels), I became obsessed with understanding the shipping process, which felt completely opaque and fraught as a result. But international shipping is a really hard thing to comprehend. I remember how relieved I was when, on some obscure kids' corner of the US Port Authority's website, I found downloadable coloring pages that explained the entire international shipping process from start to finish. They offered a first step in my learning process.

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