There was a time that our thoughts were not just worthy of freedom, but actually free. Walking to your friend’s dinner party, you know that it’s going to be one of those nights. Testing reckless ideas on each other, building them up in real time, having your opinions understood.

But life increasingly offers few opportunities to take your ideas seriously. We become habituated to reserve our energy. It’s not imaginable to think, or do, anything that isn’t your job or your chores. But just because you don’t go to school anymore doesn’t mean you stopped thinking. What’s missing is someplace to share them seriously.

Publishing on the web was never the hard part. The barrier is believing that any of us can make things outside of work, and treat them with the same seriousness.

Even within the moment, we knew our discussions were not mere fleeting party ideas. We sometimes recorded ourselves. Jotted down notes. Then we put up a website. This is District.