That Maytagged feeling is very similar to the feeling of the moment the instant before you start a new trip:

 “Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you’re off, that’s all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.”
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Last year I left my job to begin working for myself. I wasn’t sure what would happen and I was Maytagged as I tried to figure it out. The earthquake and convulsion gave way to clarity of purpose.

I wrote this on November 30, 2011:

A few months ago, I made the leap. I leapt from the land of hav­ing a cor­po­rate job to the vil­lage of “I want to run my own com­pany.” The leap itself wasn’t hard. Getting to the edge before I made the jump was excruciating.

 

Was I mak­ing the right deci­sion? What is it that I want, any­way? Who am I? What is a designer? All the deep, soul-prob­ing ques­tions that slowly stir in your head at 4am made my trek to the brink one that was coated in a foot of sticky mud.

 

I let myself stew. The syn­the­sis por­tion of the design process as a cue, I allowed all of my thoughts to tum­ble and boil, know­ing that the moment of clar­ity would come when it was ready. On a Thursday evening at the Sheung Wan branch of Café O in Hong Kong, under­stand­ing arrived.

 

With a new note­book I’d picked up in Japan and my favorite Muji pen, I began writ­ing future state­ments about myself. “I am a pro­fes­sor.” “I have my own line of sneak­ers.” “I work with the smartest peo­ple.” “I have enough money to travel for inspi­ra­tion.” I wrote about forty of these sen­tences, then started orga­niz­ing. My state­ments fell into six dif­fer­ent groups: Create, Curate, Convey, Connect, Complete, and Comfort. It didn’t hurt that both of my ini­tials start with C too.

 

I took my C’s and started think­ing about how they related to each other, and ended up real­iz­ing that I wanted to fill my time work­ing towards Create, Curate, and Convey. Connect was the glue, and Complete was what I wanted each project to reach. Comfort was my end goal for the whole project.

 

The C’s are work­ing for me so far. In my few months on my own I’ve been pur­su­ing activ­i­ties in each bucket, and have recently launched a com­pany, Parallel Design Labs. As a promo video for our point of view as a com­pany, I made a short movie that shows how we use the C’s in practice.

It’s been about a year and where have the C’s gotten me? I feel empowered, smart, satisfied. I’ve done a lot of Convey – most clients fall into this bucket. I’m working more and more on Curate, and need to get the next issue of Scree Magazine out. I also want to write more frequently. I have one big, exciting project that falls into Create, and will launch next spring, and I have continued a bunch of side projects in here as well. I still need to remind myself to set a Complete for each project and stick to it. I find once I articulate what the end point is, I meet it, but if I don’t I let things drag. Overall, I’ve reached Comfort. I’m on the way. I have a baby boy! I’m figuring out the balance.

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to re-evaluate my C’s framework and see if it still fits. I’m posting this so I stick to it.

David Rubin (USGS) and I created this simulation and video in 2006 showing how bedforms seen on the Martian surface are created. This is one of the first video visualizations of how water moved sand on Mars. Flowing water creates the bedforms seen at the start of the visualization. The simulation is then rotated to match the orientation of the outcrop.

This video was originally published as an extra feature in our 2006 publication, Cross-Bedding and Bedforms in Animation: http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/seds/bedforms/index.html

Today I gave a presentation to the Innovation Learning Network entitled, Tooling Around. In this talk, I shared ten tips for building and using tools with innovation and design teams.

@neonmauve and I have been interested in design and the senses for quite some time. With both of us having tackled this topic in various ways in the past and in aspects of our current work, we decided it would be neat to congeal what we have and submit a proposal for a SXSW presentation. We won’t know if we’re selected until mid-October, but this deck gives a high level overview of the questions we’re aiming to answer. Hope it comes through!

The edition of ten varies because I was experimenting with inks and because I’m super novice and don’t know what I’m doing yet. Needless to say, if you want a map, it’s yours for free.

I had this today when I opened an email from my good friend Delta Airlines to find:

How dare you tell me you’ll give me free internet for 15 minutes in a place where I would have otherwise had to pay for it but shouldn’t!?

On the other hand, we have reached a low in some parts of our service society where performing the bare bones of a job is grounds for praise. Recently, a friend mentioned to me that she wanted to leave a tip for our postman, “because he brings the mail every day.” I stared at her. I pushed her to elaborate and please tell me that not only does he “bring the mail” – aka the most basic component of his job – but he also sweeps her stoop, checks on her cat, washes her car, waters her garden, says hello, something, anything…nope.

I don’t get it. I think we’ve become adept at accepting incompetence. Once someone surpasses it and enters the realm of satisfactory, we get excited. At the same time, if someone gives us something for free, and then makes an adjustment, we get riled up. Is this specific to American culture?

My blogging comes and goes in pulses. I’ve been off of it for about 18 months and I’m ready to come back, so here goes. Today I’m launching the 8th version of Snowflyzone as a venue to show my personal projects and offer my design services, and I’m attempting to restart the blog flow. Please enjoy this gallery of Snowflyzone’s gone by…(yes, these are static images that I’ve kept deliberately small).

Circa 1997:

Circa 2000:

Circa 2002:

Circa 2003:

Circa 2005:

Circa 2007:

Circa 2009: