Working with the garage door up

Robin Sloan tells a story about a guy on his street who restores furniture in his garage. Not for an audience — he’s just working, with the door rolled up, and because it’s open you get to watch the sanding and the staining and the slow becoming of a chair. Sloan calls it working with the garage door up, and offers it as a gentler cousin of “build in public.”

The distinction is the whole point. Building in public can curdle into performance — the announcement, the launch, the thread. Working with the garage door up is quieter: you’d be doing the work anyway, you’ve just chosen not to hide it. No promise that it’s good. No promise that it’ll ship. Just the ordinary process left visible.

That’s the spirit I want these notes to have. A public note shouldn’t feel like a published essay; it should feel like glancing into the garage and catching me mid-sand. Which is also why the seedlings stay up even when they’re rough — pulling them down to look polished would be rolling the door back down.