Borrowed maps

That probably sounds unrelated

Stay with me

I spent a surprising amount of my childhood wanting an older sibling.

First I wanted an older sister. I wanted someone who already knew things. Someone who could tell me what was coming, explain the rules that adults seemed convinced everybody already understood, and reassure me that whatever confusing thing I was currently experiencing had happened to someone before.

Later, I wanted an older brother too. Someone who could make exploration feel safer. The kind of kid who had already climbed the fence, jumped off the rock, tested whether something was a terrible idea and survived long enough to report back.

I had neither. Which was unfortunate, and biologically quite difficult to fix by the time I started making the request.

I did get a dog, though.

In retrospect, he was an excellent exploration partner and a terrible source of social advice.

The absence of older siblings created an unexpected habit. Since I couldn't borrow experience directly, I started collecting it wherever I could find it. I paid attention to other people's mistakes, their detours, the stories that began with "If I could do it again..." and the things they wished somebody had told them ten years earlier.

I don't think I realized I was doing it at the time. I thought I was just curious. Looking back, I think I was assembling a substitute.

Other people became my older siblings.

Sometimes they were friends. Other times authors or people I'd never meet. Sometimes they were strangers who happened to explain exactly the thing I needed to read at exactly the right moment.

I collected their maps & hoped it will be useful to know where other people found cliffs. Mostly life did not follow the same route.

I've started noticing that many of my favorite things share this quality: a repaired chair, an underlined book, park bench painted a million times or even a mural - all evidence that someone was here before and maybe that's part of why I like them.

Perfection is not as important, but the facthey're in conversation with another person. Someone left a trace, a note in the margin, or a repaired leg on a chair, a layer of paint, a path through a park.

Proof that knowledge doesn't only move through schools or books or formal lessons. Sometimes it moves through small acts of continuation. Sometimes it moves through evidence that another human being figured something out and left the result behind.

A lot of what I write comes from that habit. Most of the ideas I return to aren't really original. They're observations, stories, mistakes, conversations, half-forgotten lessons that accumulated over time. Things I wish somebody had told me earlier. Things somebody eventually did.

Recently I've been watching more and more online spaces become fragile. Accounts disappear. Platforms change direction. Algorithms decide certain conversations are less welcome than they used to be. None of this feels particularly dramatic. It's just a reminder that most of us are building relationships in places we don't actually own.

Rented houses can be lovely. They're just not the best place to store family photos.

So this is partly why I'm here.

I’m not leaving anywhere else nor do I have a grand plan.

Mostly because I've spent years borrowing maps from other people, and it feels fair to leave a few behind.

Some of them might be useful. Some of them might be wrong. Most will probably be unfinished.

The maps I borrowed were never valuable because they were perfect.

They were valuable because someone took the time to draw them.