I think about this a lot, actually...
I think about this a lot, actually. It would be trivial, technically, to do this. But they don’t. And then I think about how my friend shea says, “They want...
Workflows Before Rainbows
Latest posts
🐚 Floating thoughts from online reading
“Nobody ran up and asked me to hold an empty cup.” Craig Mod on Garbage — specifically, that there are no public trash cans in Japan. “This obsession with the immediate...
🌿 Unsubscribing is a beautiful act of curation
Today I unsubscribed from a bunch of newsletters. Some past favorites, even. I was unsubscribing from the burden of past selves. I don’t currently want to start an online business...
🌿 “You need more support first.”
I’m sitting with Alice Sparkly Kat’s February newsletter. “In February, I want you to do one thing—I want you to pay attention to the question of who has the power...
🦩 The life-changing magic of tidying up your archives
Today is my 6-month Pika blog anniversary! I keep planning on taking my blogging somewhere else, but then I don’t. I love Pika, I just sort of also love the...
🪴 How can our tech be more easeful?
Today I set up 1Password, Kagi, and Fastmail exactly the way I wanted them across three different browsers. Then, while searching for how to get rid of unread counts in...
🪴 The Observer Effect
I sent the link to this blog to a handful of friends yesterday. I wrote that it had felt delicious to write in here without anyone knowing about it, but...
📖 Reading: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
“A good strategy defines a critical challenge. What is more, it builds a bridge between that challenge and action, between desire and immediate objectives that lie within grasp. -- from...
🌈 Getting serious about ease
Now is a time to get deeper in our understanding of what is easeful for us. Be ruthless in discerning what works for you. Separate that which is uncomfortable because...
🪴 What do we owe our own archives?
I’ve just finished redoing my website, and I’m thrilled for it to become a container for my various projects. I took Kening Zhu’s wonderful house on the webs course, which...
🐚 Context is everything.
And maybe that’s why I’m struggling to figure out where I want my online life to take place. Here, on Pika? Maybe. I bought a new URL so that I...
🐚 I still can’t figure out my website.
I’ve been cheating on you, Pika. Pika, the site that started it all. In August, when I typed in some sort of search about whether there was any kind of...
🐚 Frozen concentrate when you could serve it fresh
I haven’t written for myself in a long time. I haven’t written for others in a long time. I’ve written my secret blogs. They exist in a parallel space where...
🐚 I’ve missed writing here
I’ve missed writing here. I love the minimal but robust editor, the fact that it has smart typography, the little cursor in my chosen contrast color. I’ll be honest —...
🌱 When was the last time you explained something to someone?
When was the last time you explained something to someone? Did you do so willingly? With the excitement of mutual discovery? Did you do so grudgingly, perhaps because they’d never...
🐌 So many ideas, so little time
I have too many thoughts this evening. I read a lot while I was nursing, but instead of letting it slosh through my mind, I read with the intent of...
🐚 Ramblings about syntax
I spent a shocking amount of time thinking about websites lately. Although not as much time as I spend looking at them. Scrolling, skimming, occasionally stopping to notice a design...
🐚 Sequencing
I’m a huge fan of Michelle Warner’s Sequence Over Strategy podcast. Her newsletter is great, too. She chooses stories from her own life to illustrate her main points about business design....
📖 Reading: Influence Is Your Superpower
Zoe Chance’s Influence is Your Superpower hooked me in the first few pages. I figured if she knew how to craft such a good opening, she might have something to...
📖 Reading: Several Short Sentences About Writing
Verlyn Klinkenborg thinks we’re wrong about sentences. What they are. What they do. How to make them. His core argument comes early: “There are innumerable ways to write badly. The...
🐚 What even is a newsletter anymore?
I loved Robin Rendle’s piece—what might you even call a presentation like this? A visual essay? In any case, the presentation was well considered and inspiring. Robin writes of the...
🐚 Shoulds
Today I found myself awash in a sea of shoulds. No, not awash. Capsized. Feeling myself sinking and without the energy to do much about it. Despite all prior experience,...
🌱 Is my blue your blue?
Who knew an Ikea rug would spark such an existential crisis? Ours is a color-block rug, with stripes loud enough for a child’s room, but sophisticated enough for the living...
🌈 Welcome to Workflows Before Rainbows
Today I watched the Steve Jobs Apple iPhone launch video after hearing Nancy Duarte’s TED talk explaining that all great presentations have the same structure: they move back and forth...
🌱 Lessons from the Cisco Icon Set
In slide:ology, a book that deserves its own post, Nancy Duarte writes that Cisco, the computer systems company, created a set of icons in the 1980s for describing server relationships,...