A Small Parallel

Today I decided to spruce up my monthly Spotify playlists with custom art. The way I did it was pretty simple: I opened up Keynote, started with the type, and began to work with it.

It wasn't lost on me that this is how I used to start designing websites. Nearly exactly. I would start with the logo for phonezilla.net, or The Daily Ping, or fluffypillow, or theEngine* by going in to Corel Photo-Paint (I was stingy and also couldn't afford Photoshop until I got a student discount in art school) and selecting fonts and colors. It's not dissimilar to how font sites let you type in any phrase and see how it looks. That's how I started understanding it all, and that's how I started to visualize how my website could be.

It's funny because it's a very visual way of thinking, and I have shied away from that for quite some time. But this is a 20+ year old way of working and it's kind of nice to still have it there.

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* = At one point I thought I would separate my personal site, phonezilla.net, into at least two sites: phonezilla would be the home for more text-based stuff and theEngine would be where my photography, web exhibits, and other art would live. theEngine never quite came to fruition. Instead, that stuff continued to live in the Kreativ section of my site.

Let's check Twitter!

(I know I'll be tweeting this when I'm done, which makes it kind of entertaining. And, Anne Petersen's piece on their results from logging off for half a month prompted me to get this out of my head. Their piece is more thought-out than this, so you should go read that.)

Over the last few months and weeks especially I've been observing my usage of Twitter. (It dovetails with apps and the web in general but, Twitter is a leading example.) And no surprise, I'm a heavy user. But there are consequences with this: my time and attention.

It's funny because a few years back I had a friend who was really into their iPhone. I'd see them check it all the time – literally any free moment, the phone came out. It struck me as incredible; how could someone do that? I found that I slowly morphed into them. My free moments evaporated and were replaced with a check of a mention or the like.

I already made a few adjustments. I had stopped keeping Tweetbot open on my home and work Macs a while back, noticing that it meant a lot to make Twitter a deliberate action versus just another stream that was happening always. And I changed up my phone notifications a long time ago; it really is just for 3 avenues now and that's it. And a long time ago I figured out that treating email as an attention-shaming device (i.e., “Here's a message! RESPOND NOW OR THAT PERSON WILL THINK BADLY OF YOU”) wasn't working for me, and wasn't needed.

But to take it a step further, I realized in an email to a friend yesterday: why don't I treat Twitter the same way as I treat email?

• With personal email, I work on it at the top and bottom of the day, and intermittently assess if there's anything important during the rest of the day (it's a pinned tab on my browser, but has no notifications and very little power for me);
• I don't consider email to be a to do list, but when people like a Tweet or reply to it, I want to respond quickly and clear out any notification bubbles;
• I fell into the trap of mistaking always-on availability for something else, a big sign for me of a lack of separation.

There are times when I am just in a groove with Twitter or email, but that's strictly coincidental: I'm replying back and forth with folks because that's my designated break to use the medium. Happens. Sometimes, I don't reply at all or keep up on things.

And, I wouldn't be lying if I said this was also due to the incredible stream of terrible news that Twitter affords a person: all the news, all the time, very few controls to manage it (even with a third-party client). It was simply too much for me to take in and process and sit with, and it made me constantly anxious.

So, trying it. Clustered, designated Twitter times. I also removed Tweetbot from my iPhone's dock and put it on the very last screen, sitting alongside all the stuff I really don't care about. Small changes. We'll see how they go.

Daily Photos

A few months ago I started taking daily photos of myself. This wasn't for an art project or a web project or a YouTube video from 11 years ago; rather, the motivation was two part. First, it was to note what I was wearing on a particular day – and, something to share with one of my friends, for feedback. Second, it was to help me feel better about the way I looked.

The clothing angle is partially to notice my habits – what things I wear, how I feel on a particular day, how I want to present myself.

The feeling better part is something that is still a work in progress. Having a photo of myself shows an unbiased* viewpoint of how I actually looked on a given day. I spend an incredible amount of energy and effort every day considering how I look – but it's not in the name of vanity, I assure you: it's a small dialogue in my head about my body and what's not right with it. In other words, it's bad old feelings about the way I looked 3 years ago and how I do not look that way now.

It's an unfair comparison, one that shows a disconnect between my brain and my body. My hope is that a photo each day serves to remind me that I am here now, I am worthy, and I look good. This is me working on undoing a very, very old pattern. It is hard.

* = Yes, photos can be biased of course. I've tried to control the series as much as possible: same position, same lighting, roughly the same pose.

Find your people

From Michael Chabon's must-read, My Son, The Prince of Fashion:

You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough.

As I grew up I saw my friends and family as very distinct groups of folks. How could I not? I lived with my family. I discovered my interests, my loves, my passions, the things that really started to define who I was in some way. And I looked to my family to help usher that along, to tell me that no matter what I loved it was okay. That I wasn't a freak. That I wasn't alone.

Sometimes that happened. Other times it did not.

When I was a kid, I didn't really open up to my friends. I didn't know how that worked, and I didn't know how to be vulnerable with others. I didn't know how to love deeply – to the point where I could put something out there, something raw and naked and true, and feel that I was safe and everything was okay. I held things inside for fear of judgment and abandonment (“who would want to be a friend to me because of...”) I worked through so very much alone that being solo and being on my own became a default.

Family of Choice

Sometime early in our marriage my wife introduced me to the term family of choice. I've come to love this term. We always have our given families (circumstances depending), but the people that we choose to involve and have in our lives are our choices. We can choose to deepen those relationships or not. We can choose to see those people and hang out and talk for hours and laugh and bullshit or not. We can choose to say polite hellos and greetings and take off in our opposite directions or not. That choice is there, in other words. And we can pull those people so close to us that it's like they're family because they are family. That same dependency, that same give-and-take, that same love.

There are a few places in my life where I have found my people and created a bigger family, much as Abe did at Paris Fashion Week. Thus far a lot of them have been work-related places and conferences. I know they're my people because they see me as a whole person first and foremost: the things I thought were fantastic, amazing, nerdy, embarrassing, cringe-worthy about myself – those are all there, and it's okay. I can be as close to my authentic self as possible even as I'm figuring out who my authentic self is. And when I find these places, I have no desire to leave. I want to stay in that comfort, safety, warmth, and support for as long as I can!

In return, of course, I invest myself. I give that support right back whenever I can. I become my friends' biggest cheerleader. I see them for who they are, and who they might be, without judgment. The nuance I feel at this stage in my life is time: I'm now seeing a lot of these deeper friendships as long term ones. Even when there are big life changes, keeping in touch and being in that same loop with people is thankfully easier than ever.

So yes. When you find your people, dig in. Be present. Hold them close. Talk. Be vulnerable. Be true. Put yourself out there. The rewards are worth it. Families – including families of choice – aren't bound by geography nor time nor background. They're bound by love.

Hair

“Ma'am, I think you dropped something.”

The voice of one of my high school enemies punched through the air that was thick with laughter. I had just sat down in my sophomore year math class, my first class of the day. I had walked into the school a few minutes prior sporting a new haircut. At the time I felt really good about it; a rare thing I could feel even a little good about during a time of my life filled with relentless body- and self- hatred.

People were laughing. Loudly. At me. The class of 25 students, led by this bully, picked on me that day. Everyone was looking at me, everyone was judging me, and all I wanted to do was be small and shrink down to a size smaller than my textbook.

All it took were those words, that moment of intentional misgendering and being told at such a fragile time in my life, “You look like a woman”, to push me down a path where I never wanted that level of hurt to happen again. It built itself on a foundation of no self-confidence, naturally, but in that moment a completely hurt part of myself decided I never wanted anyone to judge me based on my haircut. I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to blend in, and I wanted to hide.

After that class I flew to the bathroom, embarrassed for anyone to see my now-clearly-hideous hair, and made a beeline for the sink. I grabbed as much water as I could and doused my head with it. I used my fingers to pull all of my hair back, all of it, in a somewhat-slicked back style that had no style at all. The rest of the day was hard.

The next day I got a giant can of styling mousse and gel and slicked my hair back. My hair was crispy on top. But, it was unquestionably masculine. I kept that hairstyle for a number of years. It was not me, no, but it was a helmet: something to protect me, something to keep me safe in a place where I did not feel safe in the least.

...

As seen on phonezilla.net (the forerunner of this site), around 1997. Sideburns were a thing.

For many years before that time in high school, I had a head full of light brown hair, parted on one side. There was a way I wanted the part to ride up from my forehead just so that it required a bit of work each morning. I dealt with a cowlick. The goal was for my hair to look effortless and bring me very little attention.

As I'm wont to do, however, I would make small changes and see if anyone noticed. One morning before school I parted my hair on the opposite side as usual; it took getting used to, but did work. Over time I moved the part to the middle, and kept everything a little shorter. When I got to college I opted for a Clooney-influenced Caesar cut, the last haircut before the style I've had now for many years. I felt slightly better experimenting with my hair and changing my appearance – but not too much.

...

On my 28th birthday.

I've had a complicated relationship with my hair. I've placed a lot of importance on it, probably more importance than others have, because it became a signifier of identity for me relatively early in my life. With my current cut I decided to opt-out of hair altogether. The pain I had received, the misgendering, the strange looks and stares... all of that was too much for me.

My buzzcut was a spontaneous decision. While I long talked about shaving my head when I went bald, that moment at the barber shop many years ago was one of clarity. Can I just not deal with this anymore? Why not just shave your head now? Just go for it. My Clooney cut was no more. I had no hair on my head and a goatee on my face. And outside of growing a full beard, I've kept that same cut for around 15 years.

...

I cut my own hair nowadays, just because I can. But I won't lie to you: there's a regret within a part of me that shows up every time I get out the clippers. It's a regret that I can not grow my hair out long easily (I've got some impressive balding happening, and a receding hairline). It's a regret that I can't dye my hair. It's a regret that there is still an identity and statement that goes with even my current haircut, and that I have very little control over it.

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Epilogue

I rarely do epilogues on blog posts.

Around September of 2016, not long after the date of this post, I started to grow out my hair. It became quite awkward at times, and I largely reverted to the cut I'd had all those years ago with... naturally... a lot less hair and a lovely bald spot in the back.

But I stuck with it. I got haircuts again, which was a weird experience. ("How do you want it cut?" "I... don't know?") After going to a random place or two I found a stylist who was perfect for me and I truly felt amazing after getting my first cut from her back in May. Given my experience and feelings around hair this was a revelation. I felt unstoppable and really, really good about myself.

That's valuable. Genuinely, truly valuable.

The Rules of Wearing Clothing

1. Wear whatever you want.

That's it.

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Several years ago I started to take an interest in fashion, style, and clothing. (I won't lie to you: this is coincidental with my body size changing, and having more options available to me because of it – coupled with my masculine presentation. This is not something that I agree with; it is a systemic problem I'd like to explore another time.) But as I started to get my bearings on what I liked, I found that I couldn't quite trust my own taste and sense of what worked and didn't work for me.

Initially one of my good friends helped me with my wardrobe. She encouraged me to try new things. I trusted her, as she always had a great style about her and still does. She was a style mentor, really. I can't say I did any grand experiments then, but definitely veered towards updating my look without changing it dramatically.

There was one thing I tried shortly afterwards: I picked out and tried on a couple of articles of clothing that I would never, ever wear “ordinarily.” It was like opposite day. For me that meant grey skinny jeans and a big, chunky sweater. I didn't think much of the sweater, but, I was surprised at the skinny jeans and how good they actually looked. This surprised me; I wasn't “supposed” to wear skinny jeans because I was too big for them. While I didn't buy the jeans that day – I wasn't confident enough yet – that moment stuck with me, and started to help me question my assumptions a bit more. 

Over time I found a more comfortable place in my wardrobe, a safe place. I was aided by many sites on the web. Several of them offered up “rules” for what men should wear; I found them immensely helpful. But there was an undercurrent that surfaced on several of those sites: there was a certain bro-y angle, and a sameness. Some sites joked about the “uniform” of a blue or white OCBD (Oxford cloth button down) shirt, slim khakis, and Clarks Desert Boots.

Another thing that popped up on said sites was to put down others' sartorial choices from time to time. Worse, I saw myself picking up that attitude. If I saw someone wearing square-toed shoes, for example, I'd be more inclined to think and maybe even say something to a friend about it. Part of the problem here was that I used to wear said square-toed shoes, and once I learned that they were not “okay”, well, I wanted to distance myself from that as much as possible. 

The rules, the pointing and laughing at people not following the rules, plus the “here's what you must have in your closet” stuff was ultimately stifling for me. Judging other people's choices? Nah, that's not really me, really. The rules? They weren't expressing who I was, and, I'm privileged enough to be in a position where my clothes can do that.

Late last year, I found an interview with Father John Misty. I don't agree with him on everything, but he did say some smart things about fashion and clothing.

What he can’t stand are “basic-ass dude” clothes. “Like, everyone kind of looks like a graphic designer. I just hate that look.” It’s a trend, he says, that mirrors what’s happening in music. “It’s predicated on not fucking up, as opposed to the emphasis really being on expression. There’s a lot of prescriptive fashion — ‘Oh, you need the perfect white shirt, and you need the perfect khaki’ — and it’s just so boring.”

This nailed it for me. It encapsulated so many of the shortcomings I saw in men's clothes. I looked around, as I had before, and I saw fewer and fewer clothes I truly liked and enjoyed wearing. My closet felt like it came with a web approval, and was fine, but the whole thing was fairly conservative and not really reflective of me.

This year, I've worked to consciously change that. I'm almost certainly wearing things now that are against some rules, or some other shit. I have a lot of bright colors in my wardrobe (could be seen as “too feminine” or “too juvenile” or both). I got real and jettisoned all of the blazers that I was never really going to wear (blazers just didn't take for me – a classic “I should wear them!” moment). I am shifting away from button downs a bit. It's a weird and delightful place to be, because it's experimental and because I'm finding more and more stuff that suits me, now.

It's possible that I needed to go through a phase where I followed the rules of menswear without deviation in order to get where I am now. It might also just be me in my late 30s saying, “Fuck it, I'm just going to wear this.” But in either case, I have walked away from these rules questioning how much good they actually do.

...

Naturally there are exceptions. When I'm doing a client pitch, I will don something I affectionately call “businessperson cosplay” – because how often do I wear suits and ties, or blazers, just because? I can roll with that. And, if you're starting your very first capital-P Professional Job and have no idea where to start, and need a jacket or a certain skirt length or a blazer or all three, sure. Having a starting point makes total sense.

But rules are meant to be broken.

So if you want to wear square-toed shoes, or denim with denim, or shirt and tie without a jacket, or whatever is deemed uncool this season... go for it. You don't need my permission but, I promise you, I will not judge you.

Relax

Sunday is probably my most super duper productive day around the house. It's the day I catch up on laundry, pick up the yard, prep dinner, spot clean, and generally do chores (sometimes with the Broncos game on in the background).

Yesterday I sat down with my son to figure out everything that I needed to do and the stuff I wanted to do. His wants, of course, went right on the list. But as I was rattling off chore after chore and playing football with the kiddo, my wife said, “And relax.”

“Relax?” I said.

“Yeah, you need to relax too. That's important.”

Over the past few weeks I feel like I've been relaxing very, very little. I've noticed those hard-to-change bigger patterns taking hold again. And one of them that pops up around this time of the year is, in fact, a declination of self-care. 

I added relaxing to the list. When the time came, I took a half-hour, put on some soothing music, and took a nap. I gave myself permission to just decompress and relax. It was refreshing and 100% necessary.

Take care of yourself first.

500.0

This morning, in the cool, foggy London-like air in Chicago, I hit a total of 500 miles run. (I had publicly shared the 300 miles run mark back in July of 2013.) When I hit 300 I reflected on the fact that I never thought I would enjoy running, but I came around and gave my mind and body the respect they deserved for this. I also said more than a few things about numbers.

There's a part of me that is disappointed that 500 didn't happen sooner, to be honest with you. There is a part of me that really wanted to be farther along by now according to some invisible measurement that I totally made up. That part doesn't see this as enough.

However, there are plenty other parts of me, and frankly those closest to my true self, that are very proud of this. (I mean, I'm writing a blog post about it.) Over the past 200 miles, the thing I struggled with was this: at what point do I no longer call myself a runner because I haven't run “enough”?

Last July, I had my biggest running month ever and I capped it with my fastest 5k ever – all done outside. But after that, I mostly stopped running until this year. I talked about being a runner. I ran a couple times a month, maybe. Yet there was that very real struggle inside of me, and I wrote a bit about it. I was not wanting to be seen as a phony baloney, or someone who used to do something and no longer did, but still wanted all of the fringe benefits of it. But this is something that, for now, is a part of who I am. It has been this way for about five years now.

This month's runs have been landing more in that fun space I wanted to explore. A few days ago, my bus to work zoomed by a large park in my neighborhood. I found myself thinking, “It'd be a lot of fun to run over there.” So that's where I've been running. And I've been paying attention to my breathing, my endurance, my pace. Noticing that my pace is back around 9 minutes per mile, nearly at my peak. Noticing that my endurance is coming back. Noticing that the so-called runner's high afterwards feels really, really good.

So when I finished my regular run this morning and saw the overall counter at 499.3, I had a brief choice to make. Do I call it a day? I was kinda tired, and very sweaty, and just stopping sounded good. Or, I could knock off another .7 miles and get to a nice, fat round number – I knew I had it in me. I chose the latter. I did my best today.

I guess that makes me a runner after all.

Here's to the next 500 miles.

I can't

A few years back I wrote about an extremely powerful technique in doing user research: sketching with users. The idea of just handing someone a Sharpie and a piece of paper is a simple one, but for my research it has been one of my favorite and useful tools.

There's one part of that post I want to come back to, something that I have faced a lot. You see, when you get the title of “designer” or anything with “design” in it some funny things happen, in my experience. First, people may devalue your skills (“I can have my dog design a website!”) Second, people may admit they can't do what you do (“I can't sketch!”) Both happen, sometimes simultaneously. Here's what I said in 2013.

Now, you know that some people react with, "I can't draw!" or more precisely, "I claim I don't know how to think visually because I fear that it requires some sort of title with 'design' or 'artist' in it and I don't have that but help me here and please don't judge me okay because it looks like you have those skills!"

Now, as a thought experiment, consider something you have in your mind that you say you can't do. It's there. Maybe it's old. Maybe it's something that just popped up, some challenge, some new thing. And now, deconstruct it. Why are you saying that? Is it that you can't do it, or can't do it well? And how are you defining “well”, anyway?

The truth is, you can do it. Whatever it is. Big or small. There may be things that need to happen, yes. And importantly, the outcome may not be exactly what you expect. But you can do it. For me, I found it way easier to be challenged externally than internally. If someone told me I couldn't do something, I would fester and get upset and then come back and do it. But if I took it and fully internalized it, for the longest time I would take it as truth.

It was so easy for me to apply this to other people. Look:

So it was my responsibility to help those people [who said they couldn't sketch] through the process, guiding them and sketching on another piece of paper right next to them. It wasn't to upstage their ideas, but to help them feel comfortable and willing.

Not bad advice for working with yourself, either. Guide yourself. Help yourself through the process. Don't upstage your ideas. Help yourself feel comfortable and willing.

If you have this happen to yourself, this “I can't” mentality, please question it. Do what you need to do to access your self – your true, loving, honest, caring self – and start there. Don't start at the outcome. Start with what you can do, your power, in this very moment.

A Little Water

I have to confess something to you. I'm not a fan of self-help books.

For the longest time, I was stubborn. I held those books in very high contempt. What could a book teach me? What could I possibly learn from a book that was seemingly designed to help me? I don't need help!

But I did. And I found the help I needed in not-quite self-help books. Not books that were categorized officially in that spot, but ones that had a profound impact on me nonetheless. And it wasn't always expected.

Many years ago my wife and I were at a bookstore and I found myself looking at books by the Dalai Lama. Live in a Better Way spoke to me, at least in title. And at the time I had had nothing more than a passing fascination with Buddhism. But I bought the book. And I devoured it. So many words in it gave me so much hope, so much care, that I actually felt like I was healed at the end of it.

It helped me consider things in a different light, in a different way: my life, love, death, and everything. It didn't prescribe how to do things, not intentionally. It simply presented its topic and gave the hardened soil of my soul a little water and sunlight.

That book pulled on things I already knew, long knew, about myself. And it started to encourage me to explore the world in this way. It didn't start my journey. But for a short time, it gave me the space I needed to begin to truly find myself.