Despite all this talk about school and what not, I still get excited about User Experience. I love a web app that really comes together… I'm prone to ranting about products that “should be better”… The constraints of the iPhone are endlessly interesting… The increased physicality of the iPad grabs my imagination…

It's an all day everyday thing for me.

What attracted me to UX was the mix of art, science, and empathy. The mixture of those elements can make it a rather unique creative field.

Often times it doesn't live up to it's potential. “Everyone is a designer”. The thing is, everyone is. But some are much more studied and practiced than others.

I might disagree with an auto-mechanic about how often the oil needs to be changed in my car. There are a number of situations where I want an explanation over an edict. I may even double check that explanation with Google. But, when it comes right down to it, despite whatever familiarities I may have, I know we aren't speaking the same language. I don't know even a third of what sits behind his words.

Design is rarely given the same consideration.

Quiet a few very successful and very talented designers would say that is inherently a part of design. You make stuff and you communicate stuff. I've worked along side some people who were very good at communicating design. They would dig right in and talk and talk and talk, until what they were doing was understood (or the other party was exhausted to the point of giving in). It was amazing. Those people are awesome. I was never very good at that. I don't like to talk in circles waiting for the other person to “get it”. I'm not interested in a test of wills. They take me out of the creative process.

Now, I'm not talking about any and every sort of feedback here. Designing in a bubble is often a very very bad idea. I'm talking about the sort of nitpicking and aesthetic/data fanboyism that chips away at that beautiful mix of creativity, measured data, and understanding. …Until all continuity is lost.

Which is what I've most enjoyed about advising for Citizen Logistics. The platform Joe has built is endlessly interesting to me. There are a number of meaty design problems and decision to be made. I'm most comfortable when we talk about the high level things. When I can add insight and education to a broad or abstract discussion. I loose track of time in those situations. And they help to point the product into an improved direction.

That suits me. But can I make a career out of it (or better yet, extend a career into it)? I'm not sure. It feels like a hobby to me. Not a career. But maybe that has more to do with my direct career experiences?

This time last year, we were in New Zealand double dating on Valentine's Day with Andres and James.

They came all the way from Chicago and stayed in our guest room.

The guest room in the house we owned in Nelson, New Zealand.

Now here I sit right in the middle of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. In a cute little house we rent. In a different country. On a different continent. In a different hemisphere. ...A distance of over 7,000 miles (5,600 miles closer to Chicago).

Another sort of nowhere. Further than I knew the eye could see. Only a handful of people I know have ever been here. Most I know never will. …A handful of people I know have never been anywhere.

I would like to go to Costa Rica this June. Over 2,000 miles to see the ocean and Ozlem again. Looking at pictures, it's easy to think I'd never come back.

Which gets one to thinking about the difference between coming from and going to. And the difference between distance as nothing more than a measurement or distance as that which makes the heart grow fonder.

Off in a corner three old Wallace workers were having a reunion — a middle-aged rake with a pencil moustache who was “in construction”; a man in glasses and a styrofoam Wallace “straw” hat who was an automobile dealer; and a burly gas-station attendant. “Boys, we been together since May 1, 1964—that's when George Wallace came to the Lord Baltimore Hotel.” said the man in construction. “Madeleine Murray's son climbed up a fence and tried to take our flag away from us, remember?”

“And remember, that Commie from New York wrapped himself in a flag and gave you a hard time?” the auto dealer reminisced.

“We might get our country back.” said the construction man. “I feel like I lost it. I feel like I been lost in it all this time.”

“I've been lost too.” said the gas-station operator. “I've been trying to find somebody I can understand to vote for. This is one of the happiest days of my life.”

“One thing puzzling the press is why there weren't more Wallace stickers on cars,” the auto dealer told me. “It's fear. Fear of retaliation from blacks. Of getting bricks thrown at your car.”

Excerpt from a dispatch by Timothy Crouse in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Things I like about living in Santa Fe #46:

Big snow storms that melt away the very next day.

I really want to like this Fix Congress First business. The case for "The Fair Elections Now Act" video is compelling. The act it's self seems reasonable and needed.

Unfortunately it's not in the self intrest of congress to fix congress. That's where it falls apart.

Maybe I'm too cynical… I don't know.

It seems to me that none of the issues that have made congress ineffectual are going to get solved without a real third party (no splintery "new democrats" or "new republicans") that's a strong third party (no running for president without some members in congress – no members in congress until there are x members in state legislatures).

That's a much longer and complicated road…

Things I sometimes miss about about living in New Zealand #59:

Stepping out into the backyard and being surprised by a full milky way of stars.

Did I ever tell you I hate school?

It really doesn't agree with me. Like a creamy cheese. Sure there's some interesting flavor, but in the end it always ends unfortunately.

After years of knowing this, I was finally able to pull the plug on my formal education after a week at community college.

I've never looked back.

I don't mind busting my ass to educate myself. I'm can objectively critique my own work. I know what I don't know and I know when and where I need to improve. At least enough to keep moving forward – Without a grade to gauge. And I've gotten good at managing people's simple assumptions about education and intelligence. Even though my grammar will never be good.

It's been uphill for sure. I like that. Coasting along the flat prescribed path has never been good for my person.

All and all, I've done well for myself... by most measurements. Especially my own. When things have gone well, I've done work I'm proud of along side people I have a great deal of respect for. When things haven't gone well. I've always learned something... and never stayed long in situations where I felt I had to compromise myself. I'd like to think I've come out of it all with a decent handle on, and a broad perspective of, the balance between life and work... What's important... and what is “eating the menu”, as Alan Watts would say. A considerable number of college graduates can not say the same...

So there is that.

Except that nowadays all of that feels "done" to me. Like an obituary. Like a life fully lived. That gets less so the longer I stay on that ever flattening road. It's time to switch things up. My boundaries have worked their way well past the horizon.... to push them further, I'm thinking about going to university.

Particularly Naropa University up in Boulder, CO.

“Drawing on the vital insights of the world's wisdom traditions, the university is simultaneously Buddhist-inspired, ecumenical and nonsectarian. Naropa values ethnic and cultural differences for their essential role in education. It embraces the richness of human diversity with the aim of fostering a more just and equitable society and an expanded awareness of our common humanity.”

That's appealing in an admittedly abstracted way. The idea in my head of an educational process that places a high value contemplation and instinct is a compelling one.

I think I'd like to major in Religious Studies. Buddhism has been an important part of my life for some time now. In the last few years that's morphed into a broader interest in religion in general. It's become a very enjoyable hobby. Increasingly I've wanted to grow that into something more. It's one thing to be an independent practitioner of Zen. It's another to compare and contrast and try to understand a wider swath of religion in solitude. It would be great to have conversations with a variety of people who are experienced with a variety of practice.

I have very little of that in my life now. While, with some effort, I could better cultivate it... the ideal of something formal is very appealing to me. For really the first time ever.

Slow start…

“For the truly inward can never become an object. Because of the inwardness of our life-proccess we do not know, or rather, cannot tell, how or why we live, even though it is our own inmost selves which are doing the living” – Alan Watts (Nature, Man and Woman)

I'm going to have another go at this blog thing.

My best guess puts this somewhere around blog number nine. If you're afflicted by attachment you may want to go ahead and move along… Save yourself some trouble.

Or stick around till I burn it back down.