Returning to Daily Publishing
Bear turtle turtle bear illustration made for the Unblocking project.
Back in 2015 I published a drawing every day on a blog I called Unblocking. The summary outcome of that project is that it was a helpful practice, nourishing to face the blank page, get an idea captured and share it. It was a good workout and took enough energy that after the 2015 concluded I felt ready to put that energy somewhere else, though exactly where I wasn't totally sure. And now I'm thinking of publishing daily again.
Why would I want to do something like that again? I think I can make things more skillfully than I did 5 years ago. The landscape has changed, my skills have evolved, and my circumstances personally and professionally have changed a bit.
Professionally, it's been almost 2 years since I left my job at Target in their Product Design and Development group leading UX for their connected products experiment. Since then I've been teaching online workshops about user experience design and creativity, updating and working on new games, and building my ux coaching business.
As of this moment, here are my main professional projects:
- My next workshop which will build on a Listening Like a Coach talk I gave virtually last year at the Develop First conference for technology leaders.
- Updating Guitar Fretter's look and making a separate, free paired-down version. In case you haven't encountered Guitar Fretter: it's a game about memorizing the note positions on a guitar fretboard.
- Drafting a proposal/pitch treatment for the UX Mindset book.
On the personal side of things, in addition to the global pandemic that has affected us all, 2020 was a year of two big health events for Kate Shields Stenzinger, I'm her husband. One is resolved, the other is in-progress: her battle with breast cancer. She's journaling her situation in her Caring Bridge blog and if you know Kate it's worth catching up with her posts. It's some of her best writing as I see her connect with her voice and throw away any filter.
As Kate is focused on her health and her full time job, I've been taking care of the house, transportation to doctor appointments, cooking meals, and supporting our kids' needs during the day as they are going to school remotely. We've always shared in the house work, it's a matter of percentage change, plus the kids remote schooling support needs. It's been a different kind of schedule, though I do have time to work on my professional commitments its just portions of hours spread through the day available for work. On the Lean Into Art Cast a few episodes back Jerzy Drozd and I chatted about how I mapped out my 24 hours a day 7 days a week to make sense of what hours I have available.
Why in the world add the pressure of daily publishing? In short: I feel ready and I think it will help my other projects. I feel practiced and prepared enough where it feels doable and will be fed by and feed into some of my other projects. Also, daily publishing means I can take frequent small risks and experiments and have a place to journal along the way.
My commitment is publish 365 posts in this blog in 2021. For sure I'll be writing and drawing new things for some posts and others I'll be digging into past work I've shared before with new thoughts and context. To make that happen I'll for sure be scheduling a queue of posts and taking days off. Back around 2008-2012 I published a web comic about a penguin guitarist and his guitar friend and would feel similar publishing pressure and recall feeling huge relief when I had some posts scheduled in advance.
Let's see how this goes!