Building or Becoming?
There’s an old distinction between building and becoming.
I thought I was going to Berlin to build a Werkstatt. And I am. But along the way, I’m discovering that the Werkstatt is simultaneously forcing me to develop qualities you can’t learn from a book: patience, trust, presence, and the ability to bear uncertainty without immediately acting out of fear.
Maybe that’s also why this project feels so different from anything I’ve built before. Its success doesn’t just depend on a good concept or hard work. It also demands that I increasingly become the person who can carry this concept.
What I’ve noticed these past weeks is that reality isn’t contradicting me. There are small confirmations, one after another.
The GmbH has been established.
The location is secured.
The first paying customers are coming in.
Suppliers are delivering.
The Werkstatt keeps taking shape.
That doesn’t mean it’s happening automatically. It does mean that reality is moving with me as I keep acting.
Maybe that’s the most important lesson of this moment: do today what today asks. Let tomorrow earn itself.
That’s not naive optimism. It’s a form of discipline: not wasting my attention on a future that doesn’t exist yet, while real people are walking through the door today.
Maybe in a few years I’ll look back on this summer in Berlin and say: that’s when the Werkstatt truly started to live. And so did I.