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The act and art of writing truly is the best. I’m a designer, and it’s so easy to start working in a visual medium and try to solve every problem via that medium. Whenever I take a step back and write, I realize that I should have done it much sooner.

After you’ve written lot of words in a lot of contexts, you also notice that there are only so many types of things that you write. Today I wrote about software concepts—what they are, what their purpose is, what their qualities are—and realized at some point that it felt a lot like describing characters in a novel.

Once you have a mental model for these types of writing, it makes it easier and faster to write, I think. Writing novels will help you with technical writing in non-obvious ways (and vice versa). Writing anything, really, will help you write everything better. It’s easy to get caught up in how to do some specific thing well, but—as usual—it’s often better to just start and figure it out.

Exhausted; completely exhausted, and I don’t think I even know why. Had a thought over the past couple of days that I’d love to take a Teenage Engineering PO-33 K.O! on stage whilst telling stories. A bit of texture. A crackling announcement at the train station:

We are sorry to announce that the 15:42 service to London Victoria is running approximately 10 minutes late.

Something simple. Just enough to be interesting. Probably not even the right tool for the job, but somehow seems like one of the more romantic to take up on stage. I sort of like the constraint, or maybe I just want an excuse to get any Teenage Engineering toy.

There’s something romantic about British train stations to me, too. A light drizzle catching the light, collar pulled up against a breeze whistling through the platform, the click-clack of luggage wheels on stone slabs. Greetings, goodbyes and waiting.

Drove Aneesah to Pilates. Returned a faulty item. Bought breakfast ingredients. Went for a run. Picked Aneesah up from Pilates. Had breakfast. Hit the trail with Aneesah and Cacio, sat on a bench and looked at the (incredible) view. Pharmacy. Groceries at Berkeley Bowl. Next: dinner, a bit of admin, and a bit of nothing.

It was a day of many small things (known colloquially as a Sunday), but together simply describes one thing: a good life. A rich life. A life where I get to spend time with this person and this animal that I love. A life where I’m thankful for where I live; thankful for the nature and the views and the sun. A life well… living?

Life, after all, is all of these little moments strung together. It’s not any one big moment, it’s all of the really small ones. We sometimes let them slip by as if we’re looking for the next big event, but that moment is just another small one, built upon all of the others that came before. The small moments are the point.

Saturday run along the Berkeley waterfront with a friend. We don’t manage to do it every week, but I always look forward to it. The miles go by easy when you’re talking, joking and laughing with a friend. We planned to camp in the summer, talked about what it means to make things with your own hands, and especially what it means to focus on the last mile yourself (not a running pun).

I got a book in the mail that was made to coincide with the release of a wonderful typeface, Otto. The typeface was released by Dinamo and designed by Sam de Groot and Laura Opsomer Mironov. It’s quite beautiful. The book, though, is an object I needed to own, because I love books and especially love books like this.

This book didn’t need to exist. I suspect that the typeface would have sold similarly without it. But it does exist, and it exists in such a wonderful way. It’s typeset and illustrated beautifully. It’s well made. It’s nice to hold. A joy to read. It’s a nice thing made at the end of a long journey making another very nice thing.

It’s objects like this that make me so grateful to be surrounded by creative people, and so inspired to create myself. Holding objects made with love makes you want to make things of your own with love—and effort, and care. You can inspire people to make with what you make. There’s maybe no higher honor, actually.

Some days just totally disappear. Gone in a blink. I ran a mile at 11pm because apparently I couldn’t run one before then. I must have been able to, but I couldn’t. It took me just under nine minutes, and I’m almost certain I must have had several lots of nine minutes throughout the day. I probably spent nine minutes drinking coffee. Nine minutes reading an article. Nine minutes scrolling an endless feed. The nine minutes of running felt better; felt good, actually.

I tried something today that was weirdly effective: I worked in public… in private. I started a thread in a public Slack channel and kept updating it with loose thoughts, references, screenshots of work in progress, and little Loom videos covering some concept or prior art or whatever. It was fun to share and bring people along, but it was also super useful personally. It helped to keep me on task, externalized my thinking, and gave me some light social pressure.

I’ve always liked the idea of working in public, which is why I own workinginpublic.com. I haven’t done anything with the domain yet, and I’m not sure what I will do with it, but I just like the idea. There’s something so great about getting to see how people think, and getting an insight into their beautiful messy process (because let’s face it, we all have a pretty messy process). Starting in a space that was a bit (or a lot) more private helped, I think.