José Manuel dos Santos

Instructional design is a real discipline, but it rarely reaches everyday products. This weekend I assembled a sauna and wrestled with a power tool’s cryptic interface, both cases where bad instructions turned design into frustration. Great instructions are invisible; bad ones shout. They define how much we trust the product, the brand, and even ourselves. We may forgive flaws in form or finish, but never in the moment a product fails to tell us how to use it.

We filled a Tacoma bed and made over $300 at the scrapyard, one man’s junk turned cash. My friend helped me separate copper, aluminum and iron; the place looked rough but ran like a small, lean economy. Men shouted in Spanish, cranes moved with octopus arms and a compactor turned scrap into bricks. It wasn’t romantic, but it was honest work. For quick cash and minimal fuss, the scrapyard is the place – ugly, efficient, and quietly essential.

Commuting is wearing me down, so I’m testing two days a week at home. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. I’ve always been a studio rat, thriving on energy, noise, and collaboration. At home, the distractions multiply: renovation noise, kitchen temptations, unfinished projects calling from the window. Even my desk setup conspires against me. For some, remote work is freedom. For me, it’s a discipline I have to earn again, proof that even comfort takes effort.

Travel loses its glamour with time. What once felt exciting becomes exhausting, even when the hotel has five stars. I stayed four nights in a shabby place by choice – cheap, close, forgettable. The stains, the lights, the smells, the mattress shaped by strangers, every detail reminded me how far I was from home. And yet, experiences like this sharpen the eye, test tolerance, and redefine comfort. The best part of travel? That moment when you finally open your own front door.

Sorting through a sculptor’s garage, I realized I wasn’t cleaning, I was curating. Every item, from rusted tools to wooden mock-ups and forgotten molds, carried a decision about what mattered and why. Curation isn’t just selection; it’s storytelling, authorship, even a form of censorship. What we keep, what we let go, and what we choose to pass on all shape meaning. Like rust on metal, meaning lingers, slow, inevitable, and deeply human.

At 18, I was an AFS exchange student in San Diego, living with a ceramics teacher who shaped more than clay in my life. I left ceramics behind, though it kept surfacing – in design school, Expo’98 vessels, and now in my daughter’s studies. Our new home came with a sculpture studio, alive with the presence of its former owner, and I couldn’t resist: it will become a ceramics studio. After decades, I find myself circling back to clay. Go figure.

I spent the weekend planting trees, nine of them and shaping a vegetable patch. Hard work, sometimes made harder by rocky soil and roots, but deeply satisfying in the silence of the morning, hearing the blade cut into the earth. My wife can name each tree; I mostly plant and hope. The real reward is knowing time will take over now – growth, seasons, patience. A poorly designed tool gave me blisters, but that’s a side note. What stays are the trees.

I’ve begun stopping my car at the same place before crossing the causeway, snapping a quick photo of the view ahead. In just six months, the photos already show what I’m most looking forward to: the slow transformation of seasons. Snow, rain, light, and leaves change not only the road but also my sense of home. With it will come challenges, snow to clear, windows to replace, but also the joy of watching the world at work, reminding me of my part in it.

This house is mine, but it’s also not mine, it’s my son’s home. I bought it, planned it, even assembled the IKEA furniture, but it’s his smells, gadgets, books, and rituals that define it. My room exists there, but out of bounds. It feels both mine and not mine at the same time. Thinking of this house brings me back to all the homes I’ve had – temporary, inherited, or fleeting – each carrying a momentary sense of belonging. Home is always more than walls.

I miss home, the corners, the records, the sky at dusk. Yet here I am at my other home, the beach where my grandmother came, where my children learned the waves, where I chose to celebrate sixty. A modest fisherman’s house, twenty years of memories, freshly painted each summer, always the same. Nights are filled with crashing waves, days with shifting moods of fog, rain, or blinding sun. This place is not perfect, not easy, but it is mine.