Introvert Rejuvenation

I’m a designer. I work on teams. With clients. With collaborators. Creating projects with people to bring something new and exciting into the world. Which I absolutely love doing. But to recharge, to get centered, to get grounded, to replenish the well, I need to be alone.

I’m an introvert, big time. Being around people, even people I love, can be exhausting. I used to be ashamed of needing to be alone in order to recover. But I’ve grown to accept it. And with acceptance of your very real personality traits, you can begin to use them to your advantage. Nowadays I actively seek out my alone time instead of bumping into it at the point of exhaustion. Which makes for better rejuvenation and leads to higher quality people time when it’s time for that.

Show Up, Shout Loud

I was introduced to IDLES via text from a good friend. It was the video for Danny Ndelko. On first listen I was all in. The music and the message. But I wasn’t sure if it was new music or if it was from the 70s. Maybe I’d been missing out all this time. But then I heard the same song on radio KEXP the following week. Then I knew, they were the next big punk rock thing. Exactly what I had been waiting for.

Their album Brutalism I love. And Joy as an Act of Resistance is an instant punk classic. Their videos online are powerful. The live performances at KEXP drew me in like no other. Again, the music and the message. I could feel the weight of all of it in what I was hearing through my speakers and seeing on my screens.

But no screen can compete with a dark, dank club and a couple hundred kids packed together, moving in unison.

They were my most-listened artist on Spotify last year. And watching those videos always gives me goosebumps. But nothing compares to the raw energy of their live show.

In a pit in downtown Kansas City, crushed Coors Light can in my back pocket, ramming into my crew of misfits who made the convoy down from Omaha, ramming into complete strangers, with spit and beer and sweat spraying wildly into the air, we moved to and fro, singing at the top of our lungs, our voices blending into the sound waves blasting from the stage, pummeling the crowd, making our hope real, bleeding our dreams into this reality we are now standing in together, in this short burst of life leading to exhaustion, each vocal and bass line and drum pound making it painfully obvious we made the right choice in taking 24 hours out of our busy schedules of work and family and community to drive 3 hours to a show that lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes because it just might be the closest thing to church I’d been to in decades.

And that is why you go to shows.

What are you?

The brevity of our online world has whittled us down to a few words we use to describe ourselves. In the online world, it stands to reason, the words we use are what we project of ourselves into the digital. But not all of ourselves. Online I’m a designer, activist, collaborator, citizen. Offline I’m still those things, but there are other more important words I use when I think of what I am. And those real world titles I’ve come to protect from the noise of what happens online—son, brother, friend, neighbor, husband, father. Roles I’m incredibly proud of and put a lot of value, time, and effort into. I just don’t see the need to share them into the digital void. Which certainly doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Perhaps just the opposite.

How much does an old tree cost?

One of the old trees on our street had a large branch starting to lean on one of the street’s light poles. I’ve noticed it before on dog walks. Seemed like an issue that needed to be dealt with. The branch was cut down yesterday, presumably at the orders of the city. The tree itself has 5 other branches, all extremely tall. At least the entire tree wasn’t removed. I do wonder though if anyone thought to move the light instead. It’s probably cheaper to cut down a single branch on paper. But how many years does it take to make a light pole? Compare that to the 30+ years the tree has been growing. You may say it’s not fair to compare such things. But isn’t that the problem with capitalism?

What happens when no one can make a decision?

The design process can go on forever. So when it comes to working with a designer, after you’ve gone out of your way to hire one, as a client, here’s a bit of advice for you. Designers work with you to realize your vision and execute it visually in the best way possible. If it comes down to the end and you, the client, just can’t make the final decision, then simply defer to the designer. The one with the expertise whom you’ve hired. Do that and things will get done. If you cannot do that, then you need to rethink why you hired a designer in the first place.

And then defer to the designer.

Seriously. That’s the only the design process will end well. Otherwise, the final product will be a cobbled together pile of mush uninspiring to all people who come into contact with said mush.

It is not my job to do what you tell me to do

It is my job to provide expert design on time and on budget. My job is not to bring you joy or delight, though sometimes that happens. It is my job to prevent bad ideas from happening and to make sure good ideas stand the best of chance of succeeding once they’re released into the wild. I do not task rabbit well. I push the buttons I want to push. I do not do what I’m told. I do what is called for by the forces behind whatever it is we happen to be working on. In touch with the universe? Maybe so. Simply a robot there to do your bidding? Definitely not. I’m sure you can find of those on Craig’s List.

Before the craft takes hold

There’s a period in the life of any maker when they’re making but haven’t yet begun to master the craft. Not even close. They’re simply, beginning. Fumbling around in the dark, putting together moments of light because of persistence. But they don’t know really what they’re doing.

There are several bands I grew up listening to where I think this applies. Before they knew how to make music the proper way—with the structure, melodies, or chords deemed acceptable by the masses or the powers that be—they made songs that may not have been considered great songs in any traditional sense, but my god they were glorious to me. They hit in such an unexpected way. As those bands continued to make songs over the years, they got better. They honed their craft. The songs were technically better and more refined. But they lacked something. The rawness. The edge, the imperfection. The fuck-it-all mentality. The old songs sounded like they were simply made and no one ever stopped to consider if what was being made was actually correct. They just created something, come what may.

I feel that way about design sometimes. Some of my early projects I look back on and marvel at. They hit something special. They did something unique. They came together in unexpected ways with unexpected results. Sure, they didn’t have the 10,000+ hours of making put in to elevate them to professional or expert. But they had something some of my work now just doesn’t. Maybe it was heart. Maybe imperfection. (That old work certainly isn’t pixel-perfect.) Whatever it was in those early years, the work I made was well before any sort of craft took hold. I’m a self-taught designer after all. Someone in college taught me how to think and that was all I needed. The craft, that took about a decade to perfect. And I certainly feel I’ve perfected it. This is design, not astrophysics.

I call myself an expert and the work I make shows that. But still, that early work. There’s something about it. Something honest. Something raw. Something wrong. Which is why I still like it so much.