diversified interests

PUT PEOPLE FIRST

A teammate of mine read an article this last week that I finally got around to reading as my Friday dissolved into the weekend.

I AM SO GLAD I TOOK THE TIME TO READ IT BEFORE I LEFT WORK.

It was a long week. A week of trying to solve problems. The organization I work with is in the final stages of a major redesign of our public facing website and I'm the project manager. And you know how all final stage projects can be...

What was salve to my soul instead of shame-inducing, was the refreshing perspective that Guardian writer, Tom Goodwin, had as he made a great case for how the age old problem of good ol' fashioned selfishness gets in front of anyone doing anyone else any good.

As I read his post it vindicated the cynicism (if that can be a good thing) I find in myself growing as I see the commodification of design and how rapidly that trend is ascending and yet, how few and far between real lasting solutions to problems are to be found.

Goodwin's premise, as I said, refreshed my hope that some people still are grounded to the fact that you have to put people and their real problems first before you try to solve anything. There are too many examples of rote theory and exercise divorced from the actual problems, that technology could alleviate.

"For all the technology in the world we’ve very little empathy. We’ve businesses doing what it wants to do, rather than giving people what they need in their lives."

So quit with your elegant and minimal solutions to the problems I never knew I had to begin with. You're making me nervous.

MY MORNING JACKET...

Is a playlist. Pardon the cheeky appropriation of a favorite band whose music doesn't appear on the playlist though. However, the jacket I put on many mornings is a playlist I spent the last year curating.

For most of the world's population, mornings aren't optional. They begin extremely early, especially amongst the most populous nations on the globe. And I have to recognize the privilege I have to be able to ease into the day and to soak up everything about a morning that, for most of the world's people is simply the time of day they start their day.

FOR ME THOUGH, IT'S SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL.

I have three kids who aren't morning people but are forced to be up when uncomfortable to train to join the rest of the world. It's called a school day. So, for me to grab an hour before they start their day, to finish waking up, to allow my thoughts to rise with the sun, to soak up the sounds of my backyard bird-friends, to bask in the warm colors slowing graduating over the dome of the sky is...pure pleasure.

My mind is already vibrating with a sort of cosmic music when these senses are activated by this experience. It's the song of the Creator, waking up the world to behold His wonder which still exists, amazingly enough, despite the mistaken efforts of people to bend it to our will. But, because my mind is constantly playing some piece of music absorbed from listening somewhere once upon a time, a playlist to add to the experience was in order.

Hence the simply titled, "A.M."

It's a calm musical marketplace with sprawling wordless soundscapes culled from the beautiful discographies of ambient musicians like Christopher Willits and Agus Mena (as Warmth) side by side with the joyous songs often-times culled the Psalms by Jonathan Ogden, a musician in the U.K. producing some of the best-crafted Biblical Worship records. Then those are backed up to the lush vocal stylings of S. Carey and Novo Amor. Finally, the marketplace is punctuated by little bursts of beats from Ogden, Vanilla, and a few others.

So, I welcome you to enjoy the soundscape. It's best listened to on shuffle as I haven't intentionally ordered it (yet).

It was a year...whatever adjective you could conjure up, it was that year.

A whole year, or thereabouts has passed since I wrote or displayed anything on this site. And rather than rhetorically ask, "How can that be?", I confidently say, "I'm not surprised."

Sage friends and advisors will say it comes in seasons, the creative muse, the inspiration, does.

It was a long winter. Heck, it may still be winter. Who am I kidding? It is winter somewhere.

And not the kind of winter that you spend holed up in a picturesque cabin in the north of Wisconsin, wildly prolific and burning with perfectly cured hardwood firewood passion. More of a south central Michigan winter. A November through May kind of dreary solid grey kind of winter.

My wife is kind of sick. She doesn't have cancer or anything that dire, but it's the kind of sickness that saps her spirit, her patience, her energy. I'm trying to care for her, to help her keep her sails up for when the winds of positive improvement might blow. But it's tiring.

My son is 16 — well he's really 11, but it felt like he went from 9 to 16 in the space of 4 months. I wasn't prepared for his adolescence. I'm still reeling from the hair that 11 year olds aren't really supposed to have right? That's the makings of silly Nickelodeon serials right? No, it's not. It's my tomorrow, my yesterday.

And the other two precious and willfully naughty little ones are fighting with me for making their breakfast shakes with the wrong timing (You have to prep the crazy things at night so that they're extra creamy in the morning...you knew that Dad!)

This could end up pretty bleak if I'm not careful, but I am careful. I realize that in this winter, the maker of Spring, Summer and glorious Autumn is with me, teaching me through the grey, the fallen-apart, the tired things. That God has made all things new, even while they're old. New even while they're sick, new at the same time as they are willfully disobeying (I'm looking at myself here).

It would be cheaply poetic to say that the grey Winter will come to an end, that Spring's rain will bring about the freshness and new life, inspiration and time to capture that spirit, but that talk is cheap. I don't know if the winter will end. The Maker is the one who possesses all wisdom and it's really His prerogative to keep me under the blanket of grey should He choose to.

Will I trust the one I trust my eternity to?

[originally posted in 2020 on my personal site]

FREE STUFF

There’s a lot that is free right now. Free internet; free content for you, your kids, your dog; free delivery; free testing; free stress; free time; pretty soon even free money. Never in world history (huge unsubstantiated statement there) has so much been free as we all, as a human race, come to grips with this thing that is affecting us, regardless of how developed or not our nation is.

What’s free always comes at a price, ironically enough though. That price is the constant awareness of what’s wrong and the attempt at making the free thing try to somehow dampen that painful awareness.

We were pretty connected before COVID-19 made its rounds but now, the ties that bind us are not just the digital strands of social networks and an unstoppable news cycle. They’re also molecular, they’re this strange alien-looking little crowned blob that can cause a respiratory system to crash in just about every country of the Earth.

A lot of people are saying a lot of things about this time we're all living through. Good things like give yourself permission to feel it all, to ride the ups and downs that it takes to be human during a prolonged crisis, to love your neighbor as you’ve never loved them before, whether they’re in your neighborhood or in a neighborhood 1,500 miles away. And there’s a lot that shouldn’t be said right now, being said. I won’t recap that stuff. You don’t need any more reminders of it.

TRYING TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN

I was already grappling with how to be a responsible citizen of the connected community I’m a part of before the pandemic took hold. I worked full-time in the social media marketing arena and took my role seriously as I was responsible for adding to the volume of information vying for your (and anyone else in the world who might come in contact with it's) attention.

Were we asking for too much attention? Was it worth your time? Would it be uplifting and inspiring? Or were we just adding to the noise? Lathering on one more layer of digital white noise on top of the cacophonic symphony of all the other dissonant sources.

There were thoughts about taking back our time, redeeming our digital investments, reclaiming lost attention spans. Screen time became a built-in part of the device that gives you the screen, to begin with.

Then along comes this big worldwide thing that managed to somehow justify a constant connectedness for many of us. But for some of us, or at least just me, it’s already too much.

I don’t want to emulate the ostrich with its head in the ground acting as if I can just put on a white-noise app and ignore the pandemic that rages just outside my door. But I can’t handle any more offers for free virtual site-seeing trips, classic MLB games, Formula 1 racers piloting video game cars around virtual race tracks. I don’t want to know about everything I could be doing with my time that I never needed or wanted to do before.

PRACTICE QUIET

We shouldn’t neglect the value of being quiet. And never was there a better time to practice that art. People are dying, more so than usual. That kind of loss can’t simply be absorbed by drowning out the danger and pain with more content. Quiet allows us to corporately grieve this loss. This pandemic is killing us and if we’re not careful, the toll won’t just be the loss of life, the loss of economic gains and plain stability. The loss will infect those who remain. We must practice quiet and stillness if we can. Maybe even practice a bit of digital distancing.

So, if you’re like me, let me encourage you to intentionally do and see less of the “free” that is available to us. Let’s wisely slide off some of the notifications, let’s sit still when we first get up and just let our minds feel and think. Let’s grieve the losses of yesterday, of a month ago and maybe even of tomorrow. Let’s pray for each other and our fellow race of humans as we will soon face the task of walking back out of our doors and into social nearness. Let’s feel this.

You may not be like me. If so, that’s ok. You’re not wrong. But I sense a need for more quiet amid this pandemic.

Every Street Sanford

I’ve lived (and run) in Sanford Florida for a while and somehow, I’ve still not quite rooted here. Maybe it’s because of our ministry background which has been the reason for all of our moves prior to coming here and how frequently they happened. Whatever the case, I’ve wanted to develop a better sense of place when it comes to being a part of the community we’re in. Intersecting with that desire is my own interest on staying interested in running. Most of my time here has seen me run the same 4-5 routes that I could access from my front door or a few that required a little bit of driving. But even those get monotonous over 13+ years. About a  year and a half ago, I saw something in a newsletter I subscribe to about a guy, Rickey Gates, who after running across the country (with not much more support than Forest had in his epic run) who not long after that feat, out of the desire to fend off boredom in his sport, decided to run every street in San Francisco proper. 

I immediately connected with the idea! I’ve also been a completist and this idea was the impulse I needed and so I set out to run every street in Sanford. I found a couple of helpful platforms, Wandrer and City Strides, which helped me see what I had already run and then track what was remaining as well as add a little competition among the other users of the app who live in the area.

I’ve loved it! It’s made running locally, so much fun. BUT the best part is simply seeing where I live, where I’ve lived and yet never seen in the thousands of days I’ve been a resident. Running through neighborhoods and commercial districts far off my beaten paths has given me a greater appreciation of the walks of life my community members walk, where they make their homes, where they raise their kids. I’ve even met a few people and hung out with some that I would never had had the context for if it wasn’t for this challenge. And the architecture and home design?! I’m amused, amazed and puzzled by the vast styles of building and construction I have come across. 

I loved tapes… you could tell a quality tape from a crap tape pretty quickly too. Not gonna say alot about this link except, you’re welcome. Tapedeck.org and check out the writeup that Colossal did as well...

Outliers

Another in my open tabs (or deeply buried bookmarks that were recently purged) that I couldn’t “just” close. The photographic style of Tim Navis (who I discovered a while back after watching the film “Outliers” that he contributed to) has always entranced me. His landscape work especially is majestic. Well worth a visit!

Having a hard time not “gushing” about the new identity system developed for Aero and using way too much flourishing language about it. Just love it. Also, Brand New’s Under Consideration blog is a treasure trove of this kind of genius.

Long Live Film - the documentary (2013)

Finally got around to watching this (after having it in my "watch later" list) and really enjoyed it. I've been a film camera enthusiast since my introduction to photography in the actual era of film but was convinced of the merits of digital in the interim. But film... Nostalgia aside, the physicality of the act and presence of mind in the scene that shooting film requires, I believe, is a major benefit for creative practice. And that look...

It's just so expensive to buy and process.