It’s Make Anything Thursday, and I’m asking What have the Romans ever done for us? Apart from the aqueduct, sanitation, and roads…
Black Out Roman shades, apparently.
My favorite maker
Cathy, my wife, decided to make her own because our middle daughter, Emily, requested them for the nursery for her soon-to-be-born baby boy. No work table, just the bedroom floor of our London flat. Three weeks of crouching, cutting, glueing, sewing, and re-sewing. The linen was too heavy, the glue too weak, the pins too visible.
No sewing shop nearby. A few epic bus rides across London for supplies. Hours of YouTube tutorials. Several failed glues. At one point, she admitted the project had beaten her. The girls replied,
“We can’t believe a Roman shade would take you down.”
It didn’t. Cathy finished, packed everything into a golf travel bag, flew across the pond, and hung the shades with Emily in Greenwich CT. They look flawless. Cathy adds,
—especially from a polite distance.
Polymaths
Sarah Tucker, a writing coach I’ve been working with, says polymaths are people who “build sideways” — they mix skills, keep learning, and don’t stop just because it’s hard. Cathy’s the living proof. After 40 years practicing pediatric physical therapy, a job she loved, Cathy continues to design, paint, sew, garden, cook, and finish — she always finishes.
Sarah talks about “Leonardo Syndrome”—the curse of the polymath who starts everything and finishes nothing. Cathy’s the cure for that.
So yes, the Romans gave us roads, aqueducts, and sanitation. But this week they also gave us something else: a reminder that real creativity isn’t just imagination, it’s endurance with style.
Sarah, below at Nudgestock 2025 on The Power of Polymaths is a must listen for any professional who feels they might be on a one way train track to ‘stuck-land’ or ‘boredom-city’. This is exactly why I always ask early career mentees to answer my six questions for chatting about life and career.
Make Anything Thursday: Lateral thinking is excellent — but follow-through is art.
