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.
Read through more of the Material Design guidelines
Worked on my CV design
Today was one of those low-energy small-steps days: feeling sleepy and flat, so let’s just make a tiny progress in a project or two. Then I can go back to napping, again :)
So that’s what I did. Practiced some skim-reading, that was interesting. Learning that Material Design, and website-design in general, has many more things to teach me. But I felt today, that it’s time to build and implement again. I will learn as I go.
Feeling like I’m running behind. Backlog’s building up. Ideas that seemed fresh a week ago already becoming stale, buried by the flow of things. And a hunger for more creating, (more energy, more time).
Goals this week
Pick and set up an MD component framework within my grocery-list-Vue-app
Get my CV to ‘good enough’ and send out an application
Read about type (as in typeface): learned about how to choose the right type for the occasion, the OpenFont standard, types of numerals, and some basic vocabulary like cap height and tracking
Worked hard on my CV design: continued with the simplified grayscale version, tried out some different ways to group information, and added content to the Values-section. Made some screenshots of interesting CVs for inspiration
I emphasize that I worked hard, because it felt like that: spending lot of energy to little effect, fiddling with details without being clear about the message that I want to convey. This was hard work, not smart work.
Working on a CV tends to bring out some deep-seated conflicts within me. This happens almost every time I do a redesign. I come back to some fundamental questions:
Do I focus on getting a job ASAP or getting better at designing? - Should I go with a template or invest some time in learning how to do a layout?
Should I follow “established conventions” or do things my way - like maybe be radically honest from the get-go?
And the kicker:
Should I even be investing all this effort into achieving a goal which I’m not even that excited about (working at some company, possibly full-time)
The answer is probably no. But something in me is stuck and doesn’t see an alternative. Hm hm hm.
Redesigning My CV
Hyper-insecurity. A vibe of “my whole life has been a failure and I am nothing.” Skipping the ’Work Experience-section, because (feeling like) there’s no work experience worth talking about. Trying to fill in the resulting white space with something. Looking at the whole and only seeing a mess. Deciding to embrace the mess and be honest: mention depression in a section called My Story! Coming back the next day and feeling like that’s the most ridiculous and unnecessarily exhibitionistic thing in the world. Doubting the whole be-radically-honest-plan. Maybe I should rewrite everything? Maybe I should put depression in like the footer of the cover letter?
Researched a bunch of stuff around Material Design (implementation, use-cases, MD 2 vs 3)
Set up a Material Design framework within my Vue coding project
In my research I learned that MD 3 isn’t even baked into any of the Vue frameworks that are available. Looks like I’ll have to customize my the framework I’ve picked, or implement it from scratch.
Don’t know what to write. Feels like the same existential crisis I’ve been in since I did my coding bootcamp in 2020. What am I even doing? Setting up build-environments for hours at a time, failing to install npm packages, copying CSS-build-chains from example projects and crossing my fingers hoping they work. Man, after a day of doing such things, I definitely feel like I’ve taken a turn in the wrong direction.
It feels kind of soulless. I feel like there are things to unpack here, but I just spent a good 5 minutes staring at the wall and no coherent expression wants to come out.
I’m slightly proud I’ve made some solid progress on my weekly goals. And it feels good being on a streak, doing a few tiny steps every day. New challenges tomorrow.
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.
