Announcing the Creative Room in Bellingham

My biggest breaks came from collaborators.

That’s been true my whole career. A writer who introduced me to an engineer. A filmmaker who needed a designer. A coder who turned out to be a storyteller. None of it planned. All of it life-changing.

Andrea Leksen designs typefaces. The kind that shows up on your screen whether you’re shopping on Amazon or reading a Microsoft document. She shapes the letters you read without ever thinking about them. That’s the craft — invisible until it isn’t.

I’m a writer, graphic designer, and advisor to creatives. I’ve spent decades watching what happens when people who make things get in a room together.

We’re building that room in Bellingham.

Not a networking event. Not a meetup. A conversation. Ongoing, honest, among people who can’t not do the work. Designers, engineers, filmmakers, writers, animators, organizers, coders. People with an engineer’s mind and a storyteller’s instincts. People who think in their sleep and build in their dreams.

Many have ADHD. Which is another way of saying they know what it feels like to be fully alive inside a problem.

Some are making money from their work. Others are doing it for the pure pull of it. What they share is the flow state — that feeling when the work takes over and hours disappear. They know it. They seek it. They organize their lives around it.

What I’ve noticed, after years of working with creative people, is that the conversation matters as much as the work.

Maybe more.

A writer in the room with an engineer sees their problem differently. A filmmaker talking to an animator finds a collaborator they didn’t know they needed. A designer and an organizer discover they’ve been solving the same problem from opposite ends.

The right mix of obsessions and disciplines cracks something open that solitary focus never could. That’s what Andrea and I are after — not just a good morning conversation, but the kind of connections that lead somewhere. For each other. For the work you share.

We’re starting on Saturday, April 25th, 10 to noon, at my house in Bellingham.

If you’re within driving distance — Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver — and you recognize yourself in any of this, we have a few spots left. Five dollars to cover costs.

The Creative Room, Bellingham, WA Tickets, Saturday, Apr 25 from 10 am to 12 pm | Eventbrite