Posted some ‘hey all, here’s me, let’s connect!’-messages to some local telegram groups
Watched a few ‘things I wish I knew before becoming a designer’-videos
Researched a company I want to apply to
Worked on a CV design in Figma
Feels like a productive day. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t finish this CV design - but man, arranging words on a page can be hard!
Nothing much more to say, it seems. My head just wants to solve these layout-challenges - do I emphasize this heading with font size, font weight, background color or all of the above? I wanna keep it minimal but then I also wanna have a color shade between these other 2 colors, so I can… etc. thimgs b complex (tm)
Now that I think about it, in the next session I might take all the colors out and just focus on the arrangement and information hierarchy. Unfuck the cluster I kind of got myself into and work in greyscale for a while. I love it bright and saturated, but I also like it simple and doable :). And I can always add colors later.
(Credit for my ex-co-worker Felix for telling me about this tactic and for Refactoring UI for introducing it to us (I keep mentioning this book, because it’s the only hands-on design book I’ve read. I’m not affiliated with them)
ate cabbage in fishy fish sauce with rice. couldn’t get enough
had a Ben and Jerrie-s sundae for dessert
read about wheat. Srsly, how can it be golden and not die?
read about Material Design 3.0 and made some notes
My mind is in a fog. I think yesterday’s escapades might have something to do with that.
Feeling insecure about myself and my way of being. The things I do and aspire to seem kind of lame. The way I think seems muddy and conventional. The way I express seems flat. Life feels like a never-ending crisis where I occassionally forget about that fact.
Yeah, for a few years now I’ve been feeling a disconnect between me and my unconscious (for lack of a better term). I keep investing in these ideas: ‘I wanna be a web developer’, ‘I wanna be some kind of designer’ - but something, somewhere feels slighted? Some part of me neglected, maybe. Like, these are fine aspirations, but maybe not the right ones for me (right now)?
Not sure. My strategy is to dive a little deeper into these dreams and see what I find. Maybe it will be some kind of rejection - of working on technology, or leading a sedentary sit-on-your-ass-the-whole-day-kind-of-life.
I would definitely like a better balancing of
focus mode - creative brainstorming
working by myself - collaborating with others
sitting on my ass - moving my body
staring at the screen - talking to ppl
It feels kind of dumb, to feel this much doubt and uncertainty. I’m not completely in the dark, but still, I feel like I’m missing a really important part of the picture. Like, the things that I really want to do (or need to be doing, or simply the things that are good for me) are being kept hidden. I suspect because I’m scared of what they might lead to - changes and challenges.
That’s how it feels sometimes. It can get very dramatic up here. But then, maybe that just makes for better blog posts :). But when I look at the list of things above - those are concrete things I could start doing quite easily, tomorrow. I think I’m gonna start by connecting with some ppl. Will keep you posted.
Not sure if I have anything to say. Feelin tired, maybe I didn’t sleep all too well.
I’m having a naughty kind of fun with my CV. Writing it in a ‘normal’, ”standard”, '''expected''' way kind of stresses me out. But I’ve found an antidote: Being honest. Like, advertising-that-I-am-a-mess-kind-of-honest. And then all of the pressure of presenting myself falls away, and I can start making something interesting.
Not sure if I’ll actually send any of these drafts, but they definitely help with getting me past the blockage. After I get my juices flowing, I can always trim down the crazy. Or at least how much I show of it :).
Wrapped into this is the question of what kind of work and work relationships… do I want… are possible… are desirable… are realistic… are healthy? etc. etc. I feel split between ‘I love you as a colleague, but don’t call me after 6’ and ‘y’all my peeps, let’s do thimgs together, why not also after work?’
Researched frameworks that would allow me to implement Material Design in the Vue JavaScript framework
Ok, I’ve been feeling morose today. Or maybe just sad. (Morose sounds cooler tho.) So what I did is to just do a little progress on my projects, tick off some boxes, without expecting any Herculean working-hours from myself. Did the sadness go away? No. Did I check off some boxes? Heck, yeah. I finally announced this blog, for one 😌.
I can’t really say why I’ve been feeling sad, but it seems like a big sort of feeling. A mood? Something being digested, maybe. A friend left me a voice message talking about how doing computer work leaves him feeling soulless and zombified - that struck a chord. I watched a Youtube video talking about Travis Bickle’s lack of purpose - that struck another chord.
And then I read this article that just… ehm… well, I’m kind of figuring this all out as I’m writing.
In short, it kind of opened a new perspective of looking at UX for me. It resonated deeply and touched on issues that I’ve had from the very start.
Let me share the quotes that spoke to me:
The implicit promise of UX for many of us was a burgeoning philosophy of management by inquiry and insight, in which new creative explorations would lead to new questions about human behavior, which in turn would drive the definition of new product and value opportunities.
The culture of UX also seemed to necessitate a degree of respect, compassion, and simple humility toward the people who use what we make, and the ways in which their lives and experiences may shape their behavior to look very different from our own.
I think this summary brings out some of the core of what fascinates and inspires me about UX.
The disgruntlement seems to go up the longer someone has been in the field: The more seasoned and experienced a UX person is, the more likely they are to be asking whether realizing user-centered values is even possible under capitalism.
And this idea just hit the heart of the matter and really touched the heart of my discomfort with doing design (or any sort of work) in the context of working for a for-profit company.
I’m kind of excited to learn that some ppl in the UX community are sharing this discomfort and asking these fundamental questions.
But I also feel very muddy and, hm, overwhelmed and stuck because I don’t see a way out of the system, or out of this discomfort. Do I really wanna be spending x hours a day helping some company sell a product? Do I wanna interview ppl so I can get a better understanding of their behavior, so that someone (maybe even me) can find a better ‘value opportunity’?
When I think about such things, after about 10 minutes I often feel the urge to leave my design/programming/technology-related ambitions and go live in a cave.
thought about how we are supposed to write dates in the English-speaking world and how far removed that is from how we speak I wrote this on August 7 - not 7th. Or how about the absurd amount of commas in Sunday, August 7, 2022
techy: fiddled around with a lot of CSS on both a macro and a micro scale I’m starting to develop an appreciation for some of the trials and tribulations involved in styling a website
wrote some microcopy for the footer Interesting how many different tones you can put into 5 or 6 words
This is like the third day (3 day) where I’m thinking ‘ok, I’m gonna announce this thing tomorrow’. (I have worked on this blog for a week but haven’t announced it yet.) But I can see now, even tho I’m doing progress, and I’ve ticked off several items from my list of essentials for launch today, I’ve also added several more. I think it’s good enough tho (and as I write this, something profoundly disagrees). It is tho. It’s gonna get published tomorrow, on a fresh monday.
Apart from that, I don’t know, I’m feeling morose. The work progresses, but it also consumes. I want some sunlight on my face.
Feelin under the weather today. I might have pushed my body a little hard with the long days and uninterrupted staring at the screen. We are a pomodoro household, but I’ve been happily ignoring my timers, gritting my teeth and wanting this thing to be done today. Probably not the healthiest approach. Wish I could do it more low and slow, sometimes.
Adding things to my 100dod bucketlist. I don’t even know what design means to me. Have I mentioned that before? Part of this is going to be figuring this out. I hope it gets philosophical. I feel like I’ve got at least one post about the meaning of the word ‘design’ in me. uuu, also - affordances.
Read up on some of the basic semantic markup elements like <article>. Also <time>
Tidied up my Notion project page for this blog
It’s been a day. A day at the computer. A day of thousand little lessons. I must have changed course a dozen times today - realizing that what I want to do takes much more effort and care than I had thought (like converting dates in JavaScript).
In the end, I’m pretty happy with the result - the page looks presentable and all that’s left for this iteration is to change the favicon and maybe buy a domain.
But man, it’s been a long day. I got this strange feeling that comes when I spend the whole day inside, making things happen on a screen. I’ve been working on this thing in isolation for a few days now. I wanna get this baby out and let it go.
