018 — Building Spiral Staircases

Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play podcast. So this morning during my run, I kinda had this vision while I was, you know, wrestling with all the different things that are bouncing around in my head and wondering whether or not I'm wasting time on certain things or just, you know, resisting or the resistance is preventing me or so by pulling me away from doing the hard things that I just need to do to get done. And for whatever reason, I started thinking about like the, a spiral staircase.

And I don't even know why this vision even popped in my head, but it started, like I started thinking about it and it's kind of interesting. You had this like decision at some point, like initially you can either build a spiral staircase that goes upward or downward. And I started thinking about that and it's like, well, obviously building up is great, but then you have to build support and, and foundations and stuff. Or building down, you gotta dig through the dirt and maybe you'd run this some rocks or some roots or who knows water lines, electrical lines, you know, who knows what you're gonna dig up, building downward. But then I started thinking also about all the different ways that you could construct that spiral staircase.

You could actually have, like, one of those really tight ones where it's just literally like a spiral staircase. It's, like, wrapped around, you know, a center pole or something, and it's super tight. And you could fit that in the corner someplace, and it's it's nice and neat. And or you could build, like, this grand wrap around, or I'm thinking, like, you know, like the Guggenheim or something like that, where you have this kind of slow, wide spiraling stuff going on. And then it started to make me think about that's such a big decision there too, because the width, you know, the the the the wideness, the the breadth that you kind of, like, allow that staircase to be as you build it, definitely upward is is more restrictive than the mess maybe downward.

But I guess also if you're going really wide and you're you're digging really hard, it's that's a much harder staircase to build than one that's just, like, confined to, you know, like a 6 foot or 8 foot radius. The the the width or the the the span of how wide that that spiral staircase is, it just means something. And I I guess the reason I'm thinking about the spiral staircase is it's kinda like circling around ideas. You know? You could have, like, one really tight idea, and you could build that really tight staircase that just goes up that pole.

And each stair advances as it does. And actually, if you even think about a wide staircase, for every stair that you end up building, you're actually not getting that much height because you're so wide. So you're kind of just like slowly your ascent is probably gonna be a little bit slower. Actually, you're probably still going up the same height, but just the the pace of of of you actually getting up higher is gonna feel a little bit different. But, yeah, imagine you have this the tight pole, which is the stairs going around it.

You can go up there really fast, and you can keep your ideas really tight. But then maybe you get to a certain height, and you want to expand those ideas. But yet, the structure that you started out with can't really support, like, going out wider. And similarly, if you go really wide to get that thing to tighten up at a certain point, it's gonna take a lot more spirals to go before you can kind of like get it to cone up or something. And I don't know.

I just it's just interesting to think about, you know, either trying to, like, restrict yourself to be have a really tight scope or a a tight vision for something and how that could be maybe good for the initial version of whatever you're building, but it might not support where it might end up wanting to take itself or where you wanna take it. And then inversely, you know, you could be spiraling around for a long time and end up nowhere. So, yeah. It's just, I don't know. I don't know why I had this vision.

And then also I started thinking about, you know, so you have a spiral staircase. Well, you don't just want to have a spiral skater staircase to nowhere. You want this thing to lead you somewhere. And along that that stair those stairs, you can actually build, you know, landings or, you know, branch out and have, rooms and stuff. So I started thinking about, you know, every little landing that you build.

So for this, I'm probably gonna be publishing, like, an NPM package today. That's just something that that I've, that I've been using in all my projects, and I'm finally gonna just write it so I can use it for everything a lot easier. But, and I'll I'll tell you what it is once it's actually out there. I'll have an episode on it. But I guess as you're kind of spiraling and building this stuff, you can build platforms.

I think you could build these little forks of things, and then that platform then becomes an opportunity for that thing to either go to its own room or span off to other things. I don't know. I don't know why this concept of the spiral staircase and the width or the tightness of it, really got my head going this morning, but, yeah, it's just interesting to think about where we wanna go with stuff. Do we wanna keep our visions really wide and airy, but not maybe not, like, move as fast or really tight, but then end up in kind of a constricted or, you know, I was also thinking, like, if you start with that really tight spiral staircase and you build it up really high, then you wanna branch it out, you're gonna end up with this, like, Seuss doctor Seuss like structure. You know, you got this thing that's kinda, like, loose and high and bending over, and just end up in a Seuss world.

But, yeah, I don't know. Spiral staircases. It's got my head thinking about some stuff. I'll get into that on another thing, but I just wanted to drop that little note to see if this resonates with anyone. And, yeah, I mean, let me know what kind of staircase you're building, and I'll do the same.

Alright. Have a great one. Later.