Journal

I used to feel proud of how many books I read per year, and it’s still a popular thing for people to brag about today. Reading lots of books is good, sure, but I’m convinced that reading a smaller number of books over and over again might be even more valuable.

Reading lots of books is the easy part, but why do we read books? Why do you read books? Surely not to tell people that you’ve read them. I’ll assume that it’s to learn something new, to challenge your current biases, or to entertain yourself (amongst other things).

I just read The Egg by Andy Weir, and at first it just entertained me. I read it again and it started to make me think. I read it a third time and it started to connect with other ideas that had been wriggling up from the depths of my memories during the first two readings. What if I read it once per year (or per month, even—or every day)?

A handful of ideas taken seriously, I think, might be better than hundreds paid lip service. Read The Egg enough times and you start to wonder about yourself, the universe, and everything in it. It made me think about the times I could have been kinder to others, kinder to myself, and whether in principle they’re the same thing.

There are probably a handful of books or stories (maybe fewer) that really feel as though they’ve changed me, and I tend to read them more than once. Between readings I might change, or the world might change, or (usually the case) both might have changed. The story hasn’t changed, of course, but it might still feel different each time you read it.

As I get older I find myself seeking out simple rules that I can follow often, simple stories to revisit often, and simple pleasures to indulge in. Which stories have changed you, and when was the last time you read them? If you read them again today, what might they teach you?

My wife is a wonderful ceramicist. She started in London at the Leyton studio of Turning Earth, cycling there several evenings a week after work and most weekends. The house filled up with beautiful pots made with care, and I was in awe of her patience, skill and dedication.

When we moved to New York she joined another studio, Brooklyn Peoples Pottery, the working studio of ceramicist Alice Waters. Our Bed-Stuy carriage house started to fill up with wonderful work yet again, and I found myself increasingly interested in her practice.

Over the years, one of the things I’d most admired was her ability to work in a medium that had such long stretches between the conception of a piece and its eventual completion: sketching, wedging, throwing, drying, trimming, drying (again), bisque firing, glazing, glaze firing. Some of these steps had days or weeks in between them.

The medium I’ve most used to express my ideas is software, which is immediate and almost always a two-way door. It’s never done. Always malleable. I could make things quickly and rework what I’d made for eternity (in theory). With ceramics, this wasn’t true—at least once the piece had been fired, and especially once it had been glazed.

At some point, my wife suggested that I join her studio and make work of my own. After dragging my heels for a while, I signed up. I didn’t know if I had the necessary patience and perseverance that she seemed to possess, but I thought that I might as well find out. I attended class once per week and had longer studio hours on the weekend.

From the very first class, I was hooked. I wedged my clay, centered it on the wheel, opened it up, pulled up the walls and… fucked it up. Over and over again. I’d smush the wet clay back down into a misshapen lump, center it again, and just keep going. An experience I’d expected to frustrate me had liberated me instead, and I loved it.

I’d started that first lesson with a lump of clay, and I ended with a lump of clay that was a good bit smaller and good bit wetter. I had nothing concrete to show for the hours in the studio, and I didn’t care at all—I knew I’d be back, and that the next session wouldn’t be much different.

Over the next few months I’d slowly improve my skills, but the vast majority of my time in the studio was spent centering clay on the wheel, opening it up, pulling up the walls, and then… taking my wire and cutting the pot in in half, top to bottom. I was obsessed with the thickness of my walls and the consistency of my pull. Shape, chop, smush, repeat.

Eventually, I’d finish a few pieces—but that wasn’t really the point and isn’t the point of this post. It took months of slow progress and days or weeks of waiting in between steps to get anywhere at all. It taught me a new kind of patience. A new kind of care, craft and consideration.

My wife has inspired many of my best qualities, to be honest, and I’ll forever be thankful for all of them. This particular lesson is one that I’m constantly thankful for though, and makes me appreciate even more the care that she has for her own practice. The care that she has for everything that she does, actually—this is just one example.

There’s beauty and clarity to the slowness of ceramics and mediums like it. There’s meditation in the making and in the waiting. It makes you look at the world a little differently, and to appreciate more of the things around you. If you get the chance, try making something slowly—and like my wife, be kind enough to encourage others to do the same.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Make-It, Post-it. Back when I published this post I’d only just started writing publicly every day, and I had no idea if I’d keep up with it. I started those daily blog posts after sticking this Post-it note to my display—a simple rule that I could repeat and act on.

Over the years I’d created many complicated systems in pursuit of doing the things I wanted to do, and none of them really worked; none of them stuck for very long. This time, I wanted to try removing all of the rules but one: make something every day and share it. That’s any something so long as it’s shared. It just had to exist, every day.

Ever since, I’ve doubled down on other simple rules or frameworks. There are endless ways to describe the full complexity of a product design process, for example, but the key one for me is simple: observe, reflect, make. We’re observing to make or making to observe, making sure to reflect as we transition and to keep moving—more loop than line.

That’s not to say there’s nothing else to it—there’s lots more. If you’re not building on this simple foundation, though, all of that stuff doesn’t mean very much. Similarly, it’s not always easy to make something every day and share it, but it’s a simple foundation with a lot of flexibility, and that’s often what we really need vs. complex, rigid process.

Life is always much messier than most of us would like to imagine, and rigid, multi-step processes start to break down quickly. If that’s all you have, you’re left with a pile of rubble, but if you can fall back on simple rules there’s always a next clear step you can take. Do we know enough to make? Have we made enough to observe?

Writing this simple rule on a Post-it note is responsible for my daily writing practice. It’s responsible for the art I make every day, and for the renewed focus with which I approach my work. If you’re struggling with rigid rules, try paring it down to the smallest, most simple rule that helps you move forward. It worked for me, and I hope it does for you.

I was having a conversation with someone today about writing, and about my own daily writing practice. I’d published things here and there over the years, but it was only this year that I started to publish regularly; that it started to feel weird not to publish regularly—or at least to write.

This might seem obvious once I state it, but it hadn’t yet dawned on me that my ability to write publicly every day arrived the same year that I started to write privately every day (via morning pages).

I claimed that I don’t keep a backlog of posts, but in reality that’s only a half-truth. I journal 750 words every single morning—inevitably I end up publishing something that began as a small thought in those pages.

I wondered for years how I might develop a writing practice. I’d put pressure on myself to first come up with good ideas, but sitting down to “think of good ideas” is harder than it sounds. It turns out the solution was simple and sounds silly: to write more I just had to write more.

When I sit down with my journal every morning, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about—I just start writing. When I sit down to write my daily blog post, I… mostly same, to be honest—but I do have lots of thoughts rattling around in my head, and a few come into focus.

Annoyingly, I find that’s how most things work. The “one weird trick” to doing the thing is simply to do the thing, which makes you more likely to do the thing again, which… (you get the picture). Since I started making daily art, I started making more art period, and so it goes.

I sincerely doubt that I’d be sat here writing this post if I hadn’t first committed to writing morning pages (and finally sticking with it). I simply wouldn’t have built the muscle to write for myself, nor the confidence to just write about anything vs. some elusive “good idea.”

If you’re struggling to do the thing, do the thing. More practically, if you’re struggling to write something and share it with the world, start by writing something—really, anything—for an audience of one: you.

I was reading James Edmondson’s (excellent) new book over the weekend—the Ohno book; a book about type design. One small comment caught my eye in the chapter on spacing, and stayed with me:

Tape and scissors are go-to sketching tools for their immediacy

I thought back to my time studying type design at Cooper Union in New York. I recalled the endless hours of sketching, cutting and rearranging, and—this is key—how much I hated my damn scissors.

Tools are just tools, but when tools don’t work as you expect them to, they really do impact the work. They impact your enthusiasm to do the work. They chip away at you, bit by bit, until you’re exasperated. These scissors did that to me. I couldn’t cut another letter.

That might sound dramatic until I tell you that I mean it quite literally. Somehow the combination of those scissors and the kind of paper that’s useful for sketching type just didn’t want to work together. I’d blame the paper, but I think that I know the real culprit.

I’m going to start a new type design project, and the Ohno book was making me excited to get going… but then I read that line, and I thought about those scissors. If bad tools could chip away at my enthusiasm, I thought, surely good tools could make me even more excited.

As the internet often does, it presented to me moments later a pair of scissors that I needed (yeah, I know). They were made the old fashioned way—all metal, no plastic—and looked beautiful. The kind of object you want to keep on your desk rather than shove in the drawer.

As soon as I saw them, I immediately imagined them gliding through the paper holding my sketches. Crisp, clean lines. None of that weird thing where the paper just sort of flops between the blades. I’d cut, I’d rearrange, and I’d cut again! Sketching would be a joy.

The tools that we gather—especially those that could last us a lifetime—are often worth the investment. If you love the thing that they help you to do, bring them into your workspace. Whenever I do work with tools that feel great, I feel great too. I feel great about the work.

This time, it’s scissors. Sometimes it’s paper, or the right pencil, or something much more expensive. Each one adds a little more joy to my making process, and that’s worth so much more than the tools cost.

Yesterday I published my 100th post. That’s 100 days of sitting down and writing something new, without drafts or a backlog. It feels like yesterday that I celebrated 28 days. I was almost reticent to claim that it had been 100 because of reruns, but even then I don’t just re-share a post.

It all started with trying to build community, and that’s already started to work. I’d been writing morning pages for a long time, but I wanted to make something every day and put it out there. I specifically wanted to write every day, but of course I started making art daily, too.

With my writing, I wanted to write about life. I wanted to write about places I love—like London, Brooklyn, my hometown, and of course home. I wrote about my love letter to California, about my grandfather, about places that call to me and about memories from my many homes.

Like everyone else, I’m a work in progress. Evidenced by the fact that I’m still working on things from months ago. Evidenced by this very post, and the last two paragraphs of equal length. Despite that, and despite what I claim to the contrary, I’m proud of myself and this blog.

I believe that stories matter. I believe that my story matters, and absolutely that your story matters. I wish that everyone told their story, and even though it’s hard, wish that they’d just start—despite the many challenges. If they don’t write it, I hope they at least tell it.

One hundred consecutive days is a big milestone, but I’m not going to stop there. I’m going to try really hard to keep posting every day for as long as I can. I’ll post because I really care about it. I’ll post even if I can barely show up. I’ll post to plant seeds that might one day grow.

If you’ve been reading along, thank you for that. I’m grateful and I’m honored. Whilst I mostly write for myself, I sincerely hope that you enjoy what I’ve written and would love to hear from you if you do.

When I first stumbled upon The Great Discontent by Tina and Ryan Essmaker many years ago, I thought one thing: great fucking name.

The magazine itself turned out to be wonderful, too—I reference it to this day when talking about great editorial design, interview technique and community building. The name though left an indelible mark on me.

I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to validate the origin of the name, because I felt it deep in my gut as soon as I saw it. I knew that I was part of that class—the class of the great discontent. I knew that it had been bestowed on me, and that it was both a blessing and a curse.

A friend recently asked what piece of work I’d shipped that I was most proud of, and I found it difficult to answer. Even more difficult than I thought I might. I’ve thought about it since and why it felt complicated, and the best I’ve got is this: I’m regularly proud of the work I’m doing, but I find it much harder to be proud of the work I’ve done.

The reason for that, I think, is twofold: I value collaboration so much that the real joy of making for me is in the beautiful, messy process, and; you can feel yourself getting better whilst making things, but once you’ve actually finished it you’re better than when you started. Of course few things are ever truly finished, but I think you get the point.

I might be misremembering, but I recall Frank Chimero talking about this when he reflected on the the writing of his book, The Shape of Design. In my memory it went something like this: once you get to the end of a draft you’re better than when you started, but that’s basically true in perpetuity so you’ll never really be satisfied.

Of course with a physical book there really is something finished—you have to print it, bind it, and ship an actual artifact to someone. I mostly design software, so surely I could simply update it? We’re often talking about work done months or years ago though. Work that’s difficult or impossible to revisit. As good as bound and shipped.

I called it both a blessing a curse because I really believe that it is—the curse that makes it difficult to feel truly proud of past work is identical to the blessing that keeps me striving for more. Striving is part of my personality. Striving is the thing that I am actually proud of.

All of that to say: I don’t think that I’ll ever feel totally comfortable with the question, but I feel completely comfortable with the reasons why. The question made me reflect on when I do feel pride, and why. It made me glad that I keep striving. That I always will.

I love the outside big-light. I hate the inside big-light.

During the day I want as much sunlight as possible. I want to be soaked in it. I want it to fill the room. As soon as the sun goes down, I want as little light as possible, especially from right above me.

I don’t know when I first noticed this about myself, only that I can’t remember a time before it. Perhaps I was born hating the big light. If I bothered to Google it, I suspect that would be the consensus.

It’s a visceral feeling—both my love of sunlight and my hate of overhead, bright-white artificial light. I feel pure joy when soaked in sunlight and borderline-distressed whenever I’m subjected to that big light in the ceiling—as if it’s a beam from an unfriendly extraterrestrial and I’m about to embark on an unwanted adventure.

The perfect artificial light comes from 1-3 warm-toned lamps, casting just enough light to go about your business, but no more. If I could afford both the money and the risk, I’m sure that I’d simply light hundreds of candles every evening instead (unfortunately or fortunately, I cannot).

My love for sunlight and distaste for artificial light means that I spend an odd amount of time thinking about light. It’s the reason that I enjoy yellow quite so much, perhaps—sunlight that I can draw and organize and surround myself with, even when the sun goes down.

Creating an environment that brings you joy is one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself. You don’t always get to do this, of course, and when you share an environment you have to compromise—but all the more reason to surround yourself with small reminders.

Lately I’ve taken to standing in my office—the only light coming from my Benq ScreenBar Pro set to the warmest tone—staring at my art that I’ve increasingly started to make only in yellow. The kind of yellow that feels like sunlight at golden hour. The kind of sunlight I love.

This post is a rerun. I post occasional reruns as a kindness to myself and to unearth old posts for new readers. You can read about reruns, too.

Today’s rerun is Work in Progress, and it’s a pretty painful one to revisit if I’m honest. The post was about a compulsive behavior that I’m plagued with to create paragraphs of equal length in a piece of writing.

If you read my last few posts, it will be very obvious. Obvious to the extent that someone recently commented on it. Despite the fact I knew it was obvious, I still felt a knot deep in my stomach at the knowledge that it had been noticed. A sort of embarrassment or shame.

It’s not so much that I care what others think, more-so that I care about what I think, and actively want to work on it. It’s not an overnight thing, of course, which is why the original post is titled “work in progress”. It will take time, discomfort, and a little patience.

My motivation to write the post was to state publicly that it’s a thing I’d like to work on, in the hope that the commitment would help me to do so. My motivation for this rerun is to share that of course it doesn’t work like that, and it’s totally fine that it doesn’t. Nobody’s perfect.

The reason I know it’s difficult? I really planned to make all of the paragraphs a different length in this post, but my brain steered the last three toward the compulsion. I almost went back to fix them, but resisted.

Posting this rerun, I think, is mostly a reminder to be kind to myself. To give myself the same grace I’d give to anyone else, because we’re often so unlikely to do so. We expect perfection that we wouldn’t from others.

A few weeks after writing the original post, I wrote something very short recalling how Elizabeth Gilbert had encouraged people to consider how they feel about themselves vs. toward themselves. I didn’t feel great about myself when I first thought about posting this rerun, but I’m trying to feel better toward myself. To give myself a little more patience.

You probably won’t notice this change about my writing very quickly, but you might notice it change. You’ll notice it a little in this post, and in a couple of others maybe. In a few months you might notice it in a few more. In a few years… well…who knows—work in progress.

If there’s something that you’re trying to work on in yourself and it’s taking longer than you’d hoped, give yourself a little grace. Consider how you’d feel towards others struggling with the same thing. You deserve the same kindness that they do, not least from yourself.

A few months back I got around to reading On Quality, the notes of Robert M. Pirsig—author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—edited by his wife Wendy K. Pirsig and published after his death. Both books attempt to articulate Pirsig’s theory of Quality, or “the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object.”

I’d do a terrible job of trying to explain it, but I’m not totally sure it’s worth explaining in great detail anyway. You could tie yourself up in knots considering the stuff in On Quality, but I think that most of us intuitively get what he’s talking about (which is sort of the point)—broadly: you perceive quality before rational thought.

A few weeks back I was watching a conversation between Jony Ive—who needs no introduction—and Patrick Collison—who likely doesn’t either, and joked that Jony doesn’t even need a last name. At one point, Jony said something that summed up what I took from Pirsig’s writing, and that I think would likely resonate with more of us:

I really do believe—and I wish that I had empirical evidence—that we have this ability to sense care. You sense carelessness, you know carelessness, and so I think it’s reasonable to believe that you also know care and you sense care.

To me, this is both unambiguous and true. It might not be your truth, but I suspect that it is. I suspect that you enjoy golden hour as much as the next person. I’d bet that the sound of the ocean brings you some peace. I’d wager that you don’t need to rationalize it before you feel those feelings.

Let’s say for a moment that all of that doesn’t resonate, though. In that case, I’d still suspect that the opposite is true. That—as Jony is suggesting—you can sense carelessness immediately, and are repelled by it immediately. I’d bet that even if you do rationalize and articulate it after the fact, that the perception and the feeling existed regardless.

It’s why I’ve struggled—increasingly—with the idea that all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t know if I ever did—I simply repeated it ad nauseam because that’s what people do. I think that some things are just more beautiful than others. That we can sense beauty as we sense care. That they are the same thing.

That’s the main idea for me, actually—that our sense of care comes from experiencing quality and beauty, and that the care it encourages creates more beauty in the world. A goofy example, but if you wipe the water droplets from around the airplane bathroom sink, I suspect that the next person is more likely to do the same (and vice versa).

There is beauty and quality in nature, of course, which is why I think it’s so important to get out there and experience it. If experiencing that quality makes you act with more care, we get to transfer that beauty into the things that we make ourselves. We get to make the world more beautiful and act as a catalyst for more care, and so it goes.

I believe that we have this ability to sense care. I believe that we have the ability to express care. I hope that reading this makes you take even more notice, and to bring it back into your life, home and work.