Not long after I’d acquired the minimal necessary reading and math skills, my father introduced me to line graphs. He showed me how a line projected from the X-axis intersected with a line projected from the Y-axis to form a data point, and how those data points could be connected by line segments to show a trend. I loved the idea that numbers could be converted into elegant drawings that would then reveal hidden information.

My father gifted me with a stack of graph paper, and I asked him for some data to graph. He complied by giving me paired lists of measurements: temperature changes by date, sales figures by month, population growth by year. In those pre-internet days, those sorts of statistics were difficult to come by, so he simply made up the numbers. I didn’t care. I delightedly graphed all of the information he gave me, presented him with the finished graphs, and then asked him for more numbers.

After a few days of inventing data sets and handing them over, he apparently began to regret what he had started. “You know,” he said finally, “you don’t need me to keep supplying you with data. You can make up the numbers yourself.”

I was crestfallen. Here was yet another instance of my father just not getting it. What possible joy could there be in graphing numbers that I’d concocted on my own? The whole point was to take data that was given to me in one form, convert it into another form, and hand it back in its improved state. If I was going to randomly invent numbers and graph them, I might as well skip the first phase altogether and simply draw random line segments on graph paper.  Without a sense of purpose, the task was meaningless.

In retrospect, I can’t blame my father for wanting relief from having to generate all of those figures. I’m surprised that he was initially willing to do it at all. Nevertheless, his abdication ended my interest in graphing, and my remaining supply of graph paper went unused.

In the sixty or so years since then, I can’t claim to have changed much. I’m still really content only when someone gives me creative work to do or problems to solve. Not only do I get the reward of making someone else happy; I also get to learn new things along the way. That’s why I continue to seek out work even in retirement, even if I don’t get paid for it. I’m like the dog who approaches with pleading eyes and a stick in his mouth, begging you to throw it so he can run and retrieve it. The dog isn’t about to toss the stick himself and then bring it back — what would be the point of that?

People are surprised that I carry my laptop with me when I travel, and that I happily tap away at it whether I’m on the deck of a cruise ship or in a booth at an English pub. Make no mistake, the middle of the ocean or the middle of London are two of my favorite places to be. But it’s never enough just to be in an environment; I have to do something while I’m there, and why not do the thing that gives me pleasure and makes me feel useful?

I seem to be in the minority in this regard. When I taught digital arts courses at Chabot College, I used to pride myself on coming up with unusual and challenging assignments for my students, such as “Create a still life using only two of the three primary colors,” or “Take an ordinary snapshot of a person and transform it into a glamour portrait.” No student likes to be confronted with a difficult exercise, so I tried to explain that I was actually giving them a gift. “Everything I’ve ever learned in my professional life,” I would say, “has come from figuring out ways to complete tasks that I was hired to do, in a way that would satisfy my clients, using whatever resources I had at my disposal. So what I’m offering you is an opportunity — an opportunity to learn.” I don’t think many of my students were convinced.

For me, at least, solving an assigned problem is the only way to learn. In cases where I don’t have a client telling me what to do, I have to invent one. For many years, I had to assign myself the project of creating something that could be called “art,” for a discerning client known as the annual faculty show at the campus art gallery.  And each summer, when I was preparing to teach new material in my fall courses, I would give myself an assignment that would require me to master new skills, such as “Use elementary JavaScript to create a virtual game of Whack-a-Mole” or “Construct a series of three-dimensional household objects using Adobe Illustrator.” The imaginary client in these cases would be my students, who would be ill-served if I tried to teach them skills that I wasn’t myself proficient in.

For this blog, you, the reader, are my client, and my task is to regularly find something to say that you’ll find unusual and interesting. Every time I’m able to finish one of these posts, it’s because I’ve summoned up a mental picture of you throwing a stick.