Everything you touch, everything you build, everything you choose to keep close — it all sits somewhere in your personal solar system.
We’re all at the center of our own worlds.
Around us orbit the things we use — the tools, products, and processes that fill our days. Each one sits somewhere on its own layer of meaning. Some things spin far out in the distance — useful, necessary, but faint. Others pull close, close enough that they start to shape you.
That pull? That "gravity"? That’s value.
Orbit
The further something is from the center, the more abstract its value.
The closer it moves toward you, the more it starts to matter. The closer it feels, the more you care.
Our own "personal obits" of value.
Outer Orbit — “What the thing can do.”
Pure function. The features. The specs. The capabilities.
It works. It’s clever. But it doesn’t touch you yet.
Middle Orbit — “What you can do with the thing.”
This is where tools start to feel empowering. You feel capable. Productive. Like it’s extending what you can do.
Inner Orbit — “How the thing makes you feel.”
This is where it turns from utility into identity. Where delight, pride, and even belonging sneak in.
The product stops being just a thing — it becomes a reflection.
Core — “Me.”
The center of gravity. The point where all value collapses inward.
Everything that draws closer to this center becomes irreplaceable — because it’s not just helping you do something, it’s shaping how you see yourself.
Object
There’s a pen I used this morning — the same one I’m holding right now (as I’m using speech to text to write this this part of the post.)
My studio standard pen: a Pentel Kuro BL437, 0.7mm EnerGel black ink.
Market value: about a dollar, depending on where you get it. But this one — this pen — is different.
It’s engraved with the marking 230723.01.9/10, adorned with pink tape, and scarred with two faint indentations vaguely shaped like the letter “Q.” A field test for my metal-stamping kit — a kit I still haven’t figured out how to properly integrate into my systems.
It’s a little battered now. The paint’s rubbed thin in spots. The barrel starting to crack, just a hair. But when I hold it, it makes me feel creative. Its well-worn patina reminds me to stay scrappy.
This pen isn’t rare. It isn’t expensive. But it’s become part of my personal orbit — a tool that sits closer to my core. Because it represents more than what it does. It reflects who I am. How I move. As a designer. As an engineer. As a maker.
I wouldn’t call it priceless. But it’s worth far more to me than the price I paid.
Pull
As engineers, we obsess over what our code can do.
We track features, APIs, performance benchmarks, all the measurable parts of the universe. But none of that matters if no one wants to use it.
And even when people do use it, they’ll only touch a subset of what you built. They’ll misuse things. Ignore the cleverest function. Break the intended flow.
But when it feels good — when using it makes them feel smarter, sharper, more capable — when a tool makes someone’s manager notice them, when it quietly fuels pride or progress — that’s when value starts bending inward.
That’s when gravity takes hold.
Core
The closer a tool, a system, or a story moves toward me, the stronger its gravity becomes.
That’s the pull we should be designing for — not just capability, but connection. Not just what it does, but how it makes someone feel when they use it. About the thing you made, but more importantly, about the themselves. Because gravity is what keeps worlds together. It’s what pulls ideas into orbit, and people into meaning. The path from “what it does” to “who I am.”
And when you get it right — when the thing you made starts tugging at someone’s sense of self — that’s not just value. That’s belonging.
Matter
And every once in a blue moon, something unexpected crosses your orbit.
Something small, maybe even ordinary at first — a song, a sentence, a friendship, an idea. But then it hits you. Not with rational logic, but with resounding force.
Resonance that pulls you closer and, somehow, lifts you higher.
You can’t quite explain it — how this one thing bends your world, stretches your sky, and quietly rewrites the boundaries of what you thought was possible.
It’s the moment where gravity stops holding you down and starts holding you together. You feel yourself shift. The moment where everything clicks — the pieces, the purpose, the pull of it all.
Where you don't just rise. You realize.
Gravity. Defied.
P.S. I'm a big fan of Marianas Trench. Josh killed it in this cover (that he made in a day by the way!).