Caught on a Bur
Every now and then I am struck by how the things I initially thought unimportant and thus not worthy of paying attention to are the things that inevitably bother me to no end. I bought a new place and when it came to the laundry room, I figured I wouldn’t care. Here’s a room that most people won’t see and that I’ll barely spend any time in. Washers and dryers are all the same, right? T...
External isn’t Internal
Stupid title, I know. I just wanted to say that when a person or company blogs about an idea or approach or concept, you might think—naturally so—that they’re telling you about something that they’ve personally implemented and have seen great success with. In reality, we share ideas for many reasons. Sometimes we just want the idea to exist in the world. Sometimes we want to document so...
Pruning
As I’ve been going through my projects, I’ve been needing to ask myself the question of what to get rid of. When I rebuilt the SMACSS site, I was able to simplify a lot but also cleared out a bunch of stuff I no longer needed, such as workshop reference materials for workshops that were from six years ago. For this site, I’ve been wanting to consolidate some content. Namely, I’ve l...
Burnout
I was reading Dan Mall’s blog post on Income Transparency a while back and my attention was caught by a particular section on burnout. In his post, he quotes Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, who coined the term “burnout” in 1975 and defined it as: Emotional exhaustion: the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long Depersonalization: the depletion of empathy, caring, ...
Still No CSS Reset
It was interesting to read Chris Coyier’s recent post about Andy Bell’s recent post. It made me think of my personal projects and remembering that I didn’t use a reset for any of them. Well, sort of. The only thing that I consistently have across all of my projects is body { margin:0; }. I say sort of because this doesn’t stand alone as part of a “reset”—it sits with all of t...
Imaginary Conversations
One of the things that has helped my mental health is recognizing all of the imaginary conversations that I have. Full blown arguments that get me angry and frustrated and at the end of the day, the only person involved in those conversations is me. Each time I notice that I’m doing this to myself, I start to say in a sing-song way, “you’re having an imaginary conversation!” Best to pu...
Recently Read
I don’t consider myself an avid reader. Sometimes I go months without reading a book. I have been in a season of reading, engaging my brain in a different way. As I get back into writing more, it’s a delight to read those who write well. (And perhaps frustrating to come across a book that isn’t written well.) On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous The last handful of books I’ve read mus...
Jungle
Every now and then, an album just really hits the spot. Most of my music recommendations come in through TikTok these days and the latest video from Jungle, Back on 74, has spawned a rabbit hole of videos that I refuse to swipe past. I watch every one. So enamoured, I downloaded Jungle’s album, Volcano, and then discovered that they have a nearly 50 minute movie that puts the music to an i...