Kilmc

I have been travelling around North America for a little over three months. To say it has been fun is an understatement. My experiences during this time have genuinely changed my perspective on the world and how I can have an effect on it.

Throughout this trip I have met some truly incredible people. I have regularly been complimented by a lot of them for my energy, my positivity and my enthusiasm. I am humbled by this anytime anyone says it to me. I have also been overcome when—every now and then—people would tell me I should move to their cities, that I should work with them, work for them or find a way to stay longer. This above anything else has been my biggest struggle during my journey. Here's why.

In the time I have spent in North America I have seen a strong community with a feverish desire to create, to make great things and with an intent to have a positive impact on things more important than their bank balance. When you bring like-minded, hard-working, driven people together; it creates an addicting atmosphere, one that is hard to leave once you are involved. However, I feel that it is my job—not to become another member of an established group but—to be part of a driving force behind encouraging this same atmosphere in Ireland. I feel strongly that I can have an effect in my country. I want to make Ireland a place where creators feel empowered, a place where we understand our value goes beyond making apps, designing logo's and building products. I want to foster the mentality that we as creators can actively and positively change the world around us. What if the next big thing was not another Facebook but a new way to approach teaching, or healthcare, the law even.

This may seem idealistic but honestly, I feel that it is simply a case of broadening our perspective. We need to see beyond the trivial and set our sites on bigger, more challenging problems—the rewards of solving which are beyond measure.

We can, as a community, achieve incredible things.

This is a statement of intent. It is a line in the sand that I am drawing for myself. It is a symbol of accountability. If I fail, I am counting on you to remind of that fact so I can pick myself up, and try again.

My plans to be held accountable for:

1. Continue to build a community that values cultural and societal capital over purely making money—I say continue because we've started with Crafthouse.

2. Create a co-working space in Dublin that will serve as a hub for this community–this will be done with a lot of help from others.

3. Make something that puts these ideals into practice. If I'm not trying to make an impact myself, why should I expect anyone else to.

—Kilian

The plane touches down in Toronto, on time and in the dark. I'm calm now but there was a time earlier in the day that I wasn't.

Jump back to me standing at the check in desk at terminal two in Dublin airport. "Do you have your ESTA?" the girl asked. I stared at her and started to panic. "My what?". She then explains that I need an ESTA to enter America. I race over to an internet booth and feverishly fill out the form online as my family try to calm me down. "You'll be fine, you're not going to miss the flight"

Now I'm standing in front of the security officer explaining my trip. I'm frozen solid for a split second as I form a sentence that doesn't sound like I'm back-pedalling "Yeah, no. I'm doing the internship in Toronto. I'm just visiting Brooklyn on vacation". The guard ponders for a minute, someone tags him out and tells him he's on break, he turns back to me says "Ok, enjoy your trip" and stamps my passport.

No matter how prepared you feel, there's always something that doesn't go according to plan.

So a little context now that I have you drawn in. I'm a month into a 3 month journey around North America. I made the decision after going to a web design conference in January. I had met a bunch of people who were living and working in the US at both Build and NAConf, all of whom were courteous enough to extend invites, offer couches and describe culinary and alcoholic delights which I just had to experience. How could I pass this up.

Let's go back to me touching down in Toronto. I'm greeted with two texts. One from Bell Canada welcoming me to the country with outrageously expensive per megabyte data rates and the other from my good friend Teika. "Hey kill it's Teika. We will be at arrivals soon". This is the beginning of a common theme. I have incredible friends. Teika's Dad is driving now, apologising on behalf of Teika for not picking beer up so I had something to drink when I got in. We pull up to the familiar house—I had slept here a year previous on my third night in Toronto—and I get out into the balmy night air. Toronto. Home.

Jump to the reason I'm writing in this style. I'm sitting on Teika's front porch waiting for her to arrive home after dog-walking. I'm seventy pages deep into Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. My first attempt at a Palahniuk novel since Fight Club when I was 18. I had found the book on a shelf in the attic and decided to give it a go. I love the writing style and it's made its way into this blog post inadvertently. When Teika arrives back I thank her, hug her and walk up to a streetcar stop on Roncy. It's time to go back to Bellwoods.

Standing in the porch, I stick my hand into an empty letterbox, pawing around for potential keys. Nothing there. They must not have left yet, I think to myself. I ring the doorbell and a minute later I'm greeted by newly-wed Dave. "Kilian right?" and instantly we're friends.

My dearest Canadian buddy Ren had graciously let me stay in his apartment while himself and his, equally dear, girlfriend Mel were travelling around Quebec. Dave, who let me into Ren's apartment introduced me to his new wife, Meghan and we chatted away for a bit as they gathered the last of their belongings. They had made a short stop in Toronto and were about to head south, down through Niagara and onwards on their honeymoon. I waved goodbye and breathed in the familiar air. There were some very fond memories in this place and they were trickling back to me.

Those first days in Toronto were spent reliving my experiences of last summer. The very first stop was Crafted, the coffee shop on Ossington which I had lived above for two months. I had really hoped that my friend Scott—one of the baristas in Crafted—was on his shift when I arrived in. I step into the relative darkness of the coffee shop and as my eyes adjust to the change, I see Scott and I smile. He points. Disbelief and a smile occupy his face.

After catching up a little and explaining that I'm only in Toronto for two-and-a-half weeks I order my usual. A dark and stormy—an espresso poured over ice and topped up with Canada Dry ginger ale. Cringe all you want coffee snobs. It's delicious. One of the other baristas, Brett, spots me and without even saying anything goes out to the store to gets a Canada Dry because they were out. I have incredible friends.

Then it's time to grab Ren's bike from behind his apartment and ride the streets. The saddle is about a foot to high for me, making me stretch for the pedals. The wind whips through my hair and beard as I pedal up Dundas, then Bathurst, then College and pull into Kensington market. I quickly hop into Bikes on Wheels where I had bought my lock the previous year and one of the staff adjusts the saddle for me. Now it's time to grab a burrito and go for a wander...

I'm going to leave the story right there. I've tons more to tell, even just from Toronto never mind Brooklyn and my trip back home for Funconf. Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Vancouver, slurping back lemon flavoured italian soda's and feeling quite peckish so it's time to go explore and find something to eat.

All the best

– Kilian

The actual passing of time versus my experience it is such an interesting thing to me. I'm quite a punctual person and the moments leading to me getting somewhere on time run away from me at speed, yet when I've arrived everything immediately slows down as I wait for the other person to turn up.

From a physics perspective, time being relative makes some sense to me. An object with more mass stretches space-time more, and when you're close to this object, you are effected by the stretching.

What I find fascinating is that your brain operates on a very similar level. If you take responsibility as your object in this metaphor you can see a parity. Let's say you are a child. There is literally nothing you have to do. You can do your homework, you can get help with it, you can sleep, you can act out, you can do whatever. But there's nothing you have to do. Now consider a parent. You are looking into a black hole of responsibility. The mass is infinite. Parenting, like many other things in life, is a bottomless pit of things to do.

Admittedly other factors affect your experience of time but I think the sense that time is slipping away from you can be strongly attributed to a mass of responsibility. The take-away from this thought is that can have an effect on this. If you are stressed out. If the weeks aren't long enough, find a way to shed something. Take a weekend and finish a project that's just constantly on your mind. Ask for help. Whatever you can do to keep that object manageable. Don't let it weigh you down.

The pace at which I’ve learned new things over the last 4 months had been somewhat hidden from me up until a couple of days ago, and it made me realise just how much better I have gotten at what I do.

At the after party of Build 2011, in the crowded downstairs of McHugh’s in Belfast, I had the good fortune of being introduced to Paul. Throughout the conference I had been introduced to many people, most of whom I knew either by name or reputation from mentions or retweets, however, I had absolutely no idea who this guy was. That being said, I proceeded to be my usual full-on self and started talking, summarising my relatively recent past, my passion for design, and my interest in “getting into web stuff”. I also mentioned, in passing, that I had a potential internship lined up once I went back to Dublin which seemed to pique Paul’s interest and he immediately said “Why don’t you come work for me?”. As a recently twenty-one-year-old diploma graduate with very little experience and fresh off a plane from Canada to the visibly grim-economic landscape (breath). THIS was a very exciting sentence to half hear over the bustle of conversation and music. It sobered me a little. I asked “really?, but you haven’t seen any of my work”, Paul non-chelantly passed this off as something of little consequence and so I was then asked ”how much do you want?”. Excitement and terror ran through me.

We’re out of the bustling after-party now and in a coffee shop in Dublin five days later. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nearly shaking with nerves and excitement. By this stage Paul had seen my work and I remember distincly him saying “You haven’t made your masterpiece yet have you”. I, of course, agreed. I wasn’t proud of any of that work anymore and the link I’d sent him was to a terribly designed gallery page—to add insult to injury. I wanted him to know what he getting into before he hired me. Not much as I saw it, but he seemed to recognise something I couldn’t see. We discussed the project I’d be working on. Úll, a designey, developey, inspirational conference about and for people building and designing for iOS and Mac. The idea was in its infancy in Paul’s head but I was already sketching logo ideas, being generally over-enthusiastic. And so, after our discussion, we walked to the office on barrow street and I began working.

As each day and week passed I got more and more bogged down. There was just so much new-ness. I knew basic html and css but really was still grappling with some of the key concepts like positioning and correctly marking things up. I now had to know all that as well as figuring out semantics, responsive design, web-fonts, styling rails apps, SASS, GIT, RUBY, HAML, how to use textmate, using soft tabs, Pull, push, commit, error, error, error. I felt overwhelmed. Almost everything was new. I was asking so many questions of Paddy, Cillian and Dave—my new colleagues. They were all incredibly helpful but every answer lead to more and more chapters started and none finished.

I think I need to bring us to today. I don’t need to take you through my bad practices, my struggles or triumphs with this or that. I want to tell you about my realisation. I’ve gotten so much better at this. I had to do some work on an old project from about three months ago. I was laughing and crying. I couldn’t believe how badly written the code was, and I now had to pick apart my own mess and refactor the damn thing. However, it did make me realise that all those things I had been overwhelmed by were starting to make sense. I love SASS now, and I’m getting ever closer to understanding floats! I’ve read about the troubles other people are having with designing for so many devices, screen resolutions and sizes and I know now that I’m far from alone here and that makes it less of a burden. Plus far better people than me are working out ways to make it easier for us all. I’ve also accepted that things take more time than you’d like, but less time than you’d expect. If you had said to me, it’ll take you four months before you’ll feel like you’ve made an real progress I probably would have been up in arms. But when I think about it. That’s one third of a year. Imagine what I can learn in the next 2.