Weeknotes 23:14

May 16, 2023

Week of May 7–13

On the Road Again

I spent a good chunk of the week in Murray, Kentucky helping my son to pack up his dorm room and move home for the summer. I drove up on Wednesday and returned home with my son on Saturday. We stopped in Nashville for a couple of hours to visit my oldest daughter, who lives there. We went out to lunch with her and enjoyed catching up. I got to see each of my 3 kids on Saturday (not all at once) which has become a rarer thing over the last year.

The Old Art and Design building where my son has a majority of his classes. I took this picture while waiting on him to finish up his last “final”, which was a critique of his last 3D modeling project.

We finished packing up his room much later than we had anticipated as we finished around 7:30 PM on Friday night. We headed over to Don Sol’s for dinner and then back to our hotel to relax for the rest of the evening.

We enjoyed several good conversations over dinner and lunch in the three days I was in Murray. It was really good to reconnect with him and made me excited for the times we will get to spend together this summer.

It was nice to break the routine and get away for a few days even though it was hard work packing up his stuff, putting things in a local storage unit, and then packing up our vehicles to make the trek back home. I always feel like I come back with a renewed perspective after these road trips.

You’re the only one with your voice

The making of art is not a competitive act, Our work is representative of the self. You would be amiss to say, “I’m not up to the challenge.” Yes, you may need to deepen your craft to fully realize your vision. If you’re not up to it, no one else can do it. Only you can. You’re the only one with your voice.

The Creative Act, page 74

I really liked this thought from The Creative Act in the chapter, Self-Doubt. I don’t think I have ever thought about how each developer leaves their own mark on a project. Each developer on my team would build the same project differently because of the unique people they are. Each of us brings a unique perspective, with biases, opinions, philosophies, and tools or techniques we favor. Each of us will have a different vision of how to build the project.

Yes, in the end, each of our solutions would resemble the design, but the way we code, and the way we animate or bring the design to life is going to be unique to each one of us. No one else can make the site the way that I do. It is a unique contribution much like each designer would come up with a different design solution to the same problem.

Work highlights

  • I finished up work on the one-page site I mentioned last week. We had anticipated launching the site this week but plans changed and the client decided to turn over the project to their in-house team to add to their site instead of having a separate stand-alone one-page site. It is always a bummer when something you worked on does not ship. But it happens. I still value what I got from the experience. I tried some new things with animations and learned things along the way.
  • I jumped in and built a new template for the Toyota Policy Driver’s site that we launched earlier this year. It was fun to revisit the project and to have the chance to address another template that did not get fully fleshed out before we launched.

Articles I read

Books I am reading

  • The Creative Act – I have been resonating with more of the content I am reading the deeper I get into the book. The chapter, Self-Doubt, was very thought-provoking for me. It was also very personal to me as I have been experiencing a lot of self-doubt recently.
  • Ten Words to Live By
  • From Strength to Strength – This has been a very personal read for me. As I have passed middle age, I have begun to think about my career differently. This book deals with the painful reality of decline as we age but looks to equip us to find new opportunities by embracing new priorities and habits. I am hoping this book will help me to come up with a plan to make the most of the years ahead of me.
  • Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing
  • True to His Word – Jon Bloom is one of my favorite authors. I felt like I needed the focused study on God’s faithfulness which is the subject of this book’s 100 meditations.

What I watched

  • American Pickers (Netflix)
  • Pawn Stars (DEFY)
  • Star Wars: Rebels (Disney+)
  • Jurassic World (SciFy) – It seems like this movie is always on when I travel.
  • Fast and Furious 7 – I watched a good portion of this movie at the hotel but didn’t stay to watch the ending.

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