I awake to an internal conflict. It’s 3:45 am. Last night’s tater tots are noisily discussing an exit strategy, whether it be a retreat to the North or the South. I go to the bathroom prepared for either, wastebasket in hand.
Hours later, I am still posed like Rodin’s statue, lost in thought. How did I get here? By the time the birds start singing, I’ve retraced all the roads back to the very first fork, the one that led me astray.
Was it the Spring of 1995, almost 30 years ago, that I veered from engineering into publishing? My first article was about FEA, which was starting to enter mainstream engineering after being forever in the clutches of specialists with PhDs. I was eager to tell engineers how they could use it safely and supply a few guardrails, so planes wouldn’t start falling out of the sky or bridges come crashing down.
It was a practical article, not a scholarly one. Wondering if anyone would be interested I sent it to Cadence, one of two magazines covering AutoCAD, but one that was looking to branch out and cover additional design software. I was stunned to see my article on the cover of the May issue, not because I had gotten the cover with my first article, but because the headline said *Discover FEA for AutoCAD.” AutoCAD did not do FEA. The text below the headline said “ “7 proven ways to create designs today.” I don’t know where “seven” came from. I had listed more than seven ways.
I was to learn that odd numbers in headlines are attractive and editors value creativity more than accuracy. I should have backed down that road then and there. Accuracy was what engineering was all about.
But I stayed in. Mostly because, instead of teaching design to a few dozen students at a time, I had the opportunity to teach a hundred thousand (the number of subscribers Cadence had).
Looking back, a thousand articles later, I wonder what effect I have had. A more accomplished person might consider writing a memoir. But what would my memoirs possibly be called?
- A Road Not Taken? Too soul searchy. Besides, i think that’s taken some poet took that one.
- 30 Years a Slave, for the enslavement of publishers by advertisers? Wouldn’t that be insulting to every descendant of real slaves?
- Burning Bridges, for what a book sprung from my current frame of mind would do. It would be an unfair comparison to Burn Book, by Kara Swisher, a real journalist who dared tell all.
The sun is rising and melting away my melancholy. There is much still to cover. I am by no means done. The advent of AI in CAD is all by itself a reason to continue, for hope… The time for memoirs is not just yet.
Or have I just written the foreword?