“Oh John, it is not,” she said as she waved her hand in disapproval towards her husband as she always did. Her tone was a conjunction of affection and annoyance. As he mumbled something about malarchy, she loudly slid her chair out from the table and got up, walking towards the pistachio-green freezer.

“Anyone want ice cream pie? Cookies? Millie next door made you all an ice cream pie and someone needs to eat it!”

That was my grandmother. Tired from years of being a stoic, hard-working mother. Calloused from being married to a true Irishman. Seemingly happy as a grandmother that could shovel food in the general direction of her grandkids.

My grandmother fit perfectly with their house in the countryside. Nestled in an older suburb of Philadelphia, tucked away in Amish country where high schools had sprawling campuses adjacent to horse farms. Life was slow in Lansdale, PA and, well, that fit my grandmother. She was unconcerned with the Bustle of life in her later years. Perhaps it was from living in Philadelphia her whole life.

As a child visiting his grandparents, I remember more in colors, smells and other sensations. Not uncommon to be sure, but my grandmother was hairspray. My grandmother was velour. She was Valmints and a dusty-rose armchair. To me her hair was yellow as a crayon and her overall character was that of Big Bird…though I’m not really sure why. Her house was breathy and open, with warm summer winds passing through the curtains. Every appliance was a icon of design, dating back to a time I only read about in Scott Fordsman textbooks. In the middle of the night, my trips to get water from the bathroom disturbed the chorus of floorboards, releasing a song of the years.

She loved the beach, and didn’t mind just sitting. I can remember always just staring at her, wondering how she was so darn good at sitting still (especially compared to my grandfather who was a bundle of energy) Perhaps many children go through this with their elderly relatives, but I was in awe. I was envious of this amazing talent (even being relatively sedate as a child myself)…and I think I’ve become my grandmother now in a way. To us the beach is not frying out in the sun or splashing in the waves. It’s watching beauty unfold before you and just taking it all in, recharging your soul. I can remember being at the shore and asking my grandmother how I looked as I got dressed to go out on the boardwalk. Apparently as a six year old, style was important to me, and my grandmother was the fashion police that needed appealing to. I always looked to my grandmother for approval for some reason.

In the six years since I graduated from high school, I’ve grown closer to my grandmother. I’ve moved out of the blissful haze of childish immaturity and seen her for who she is. As she moved away from Pennsylvania and settled in with my parents, I saw her change. The loss of my grandfather hollowed her. The light in her eyes was gone, instead replaced with fear of the unknown. I guess this is the time when I learned the most from my grandmother, at her most vulnerable.

My grandmother taught me more than just how to sit still. She taught me how to share (cheerios, most of all). She taught me how to be a silent helper, how to swallow one’s pride and help carry the load. She taught me that religion is like your right arm, and not to betray your composure by wearing your emotion on your sleeve. She was the last connection to my heritage, and someone that I wanted my future children to meet desperately.

Tomorrow I head back to Amish country. Though the fields are long-since frozen and the horses all put back in their stables, that same breathy wind of childhood awe and innocence still moves the trees. She’ll be laid to rest with my grandfather and other relatives, to let the world pass them by for good. Tomorrow I say goodbye to my grandmother for the last time. But I’m not worried about her, with her awesome talent of being still and taking in life. I’m worried about me, and whether I made the most of my time with her.

So come my wedding day next October, as I’m getting dressed, I’ll look up and wonder if she approves of my outfit. Rest peacefully, Mom.

I got linked somehow to Justin’s video of his own dark night of the soul (Justin is the world’s first blogger, has a breakdown and records it on camera). The basic premise is that he has a breakdown because he can’t relate. His life is spent publishing his intimicies and daily intricacies online for all to see. But as an adult (after doing this for ten years), this is clashing with his sense of privacy and desire. All in all, his attempt to connect with others has left him hollow and alone.

So I got to thinking how terribly, painfully true this is. Yes, in a Dateline NBC shock-journalism way there could be prophecies of doom and gloom about a generation of people raised like this…a generation taught to take snippets of daily life, churn them out in pulp fashion, and think/expect/know that a world of viewers is reading along with you. A generation taught that to experience life is to just re-express it in a post that accepts comments. A generation taught that personal expression is wholly their IM profile, blog entry, interesting-links posts and 20 questions email survey answers. A life reduced to inarticulate, awkwardly written entries. A generation that thinks regurgitation is interaction.

But further, isn’t this the basic premise of any artistic expression (forgive me, for I’m not connecting blog-writting with any sort of art)? I mean, for any artist…let’s take a painter for stereotypical purposes. A true “artist” is one who lives to communicate through the synergy and combination of form and color. It’s almost as if they express autistic traits in being able to communicate better through this alternative means than through actual human, verbal dialogue which most of us seek. Is it not true that someone who spends their entire life expressing themselves, pouring every ounce of being, their love and their worth into this faceless “product,” loses sight of the act itself? If the purpose of this painting is to communicate (either to others directly or just what’s inside you), does it not seem ridiculous that the painter has most likely lost what relating to others really is? (Becoming so immersed in the act of conscious expression perhaps negates the purest form) Is that why the path of many artists starts with tangible expressions that are more easily discernable to the untrained public—that later in their career spiral further and further into avant garde, almost cold and emotionless “high art?” Is it that the deeper the relationship with your expression (art), the more fractured life becomes in terms of truly relating to the world and others? Perhaps this is a dance with beauty, only to be seduced into a life of being alone. The cosmic sucker-punch. Seek me and be left as a shell.

It’s hard to express the hopelessness and saddness that these thoughts bring (irony?). For anyone who’s ever written a song, published a written work or completed a painting, it is not foreign though. The pain and struggle of expressing something in a way that is not natural to humans, the difficulty of creating something from absolutely nothing — this is pain. You have something inside that needs to come out, but you are unable to express it fast enough, purely enough, or perfectly at all.

What Justin went through I’m sure is indicative of the inner battle that many people face. Be it from true artistic expression or just daily relations in blog format. I just hope that a Dateline-esque prediction never comes to fruition. A generation of pseudo-emotional/less zombies publishing content all the while feeling more alone than ever. That is a true nightmare I pray we don’t see extend into reality.

A new year, a new chance at life. With the calendar turning over this month, I’ve spent plenty of time reevaluating my life/career/future. Unfortunately, nothing nor no one decended from on high to answer much of anything.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this short piece. All in all, it fairly accurately summed up the few conclusions that I’ve been drawing lately. For those not the least bit interested in the career-ramblings of a web designer, feel free to jump off elsewhere. Not surprising, so no hard feelings here.

So back to the topic at hand, though. As a designer, there does seem to be a well-defined caste system, a progression of sorts. Well, at least for print designers, since their profession has been around quite a bit longer than web design. But for all intents and purposes, we’ll lump both together. The caste system in design goes from junior designer (peasant, lowest of the low)—who gets the crappiest jobs, trickled down from the next higher position. The senior designer (landowner) directs the flow of jobs, picks the better/more visable ones and passes the pamphlets and newsletters to the peons below. Many designers want to stop here. After all, a designer lives to create beautiful pieces. But for others, the desire to move on either sweeps them up, or they feel a calling for something more. The art director/project manager position is where the rules of the game start to change. You are less involved in the day-to-day grind of production. You call shots from a higher position, creatively directing the flow of “looks” and “market positions.” The skills required are less artistic and more business. Above this job is the entrepreneur that just plain breaks the caste to start his own villiage as king.

The past year or so, I’ve felt the urge to move on. Perhaps it’s because my daily grind is virtually free of any sort of creative production, and more managerial and production. I spend more time making decisions and art directing/managing our outside consultants than I do designing from scratch myself. In a way, I like this…and it scares me.

See, for a designer, it’s the idea of “be great or be gone.” Sure, the world is made of regular-joe designers, not all hot shots and design l33ts (elites). But there really is a cut-throat environment and intense pressure to stay on top of the hippest colors, fonts, designs. This month New York is calling the shots. Next month it’s Brussels. After that San Francisco. Everyone is a budding designer, and design schools puke out better designers yearly. That guy is only 17 and he has clients from Nike to MTV! And add on top of that the constant tech advances in web design (new languages/architectures/coding styles, etc) that you have to be up on and you could easily spend more than 24-hours a day learning and reading and supposedly advancing. The race is what makes it exciting, seeing if you can put out a piece just *one more time* that makes the grade. It’s an adrenaline rush. At some point, though, you’re bound to get tired.

So I sit here, with 04 somehow giving way to 05 without me noticing where it went, and trying to figure out if I want to tap out. I find solace and almost equal enjoyment in directing the movements of designers in their frenzied race to stay on top. While most professions don’t get to chose if they want to move into management or not, I guess design is special in that sense. But on second thought, what makes management so great?

Maybe the second half of this year’s first month will provide an answer as to which road to aim for. Or maybe I’ll flip a coin.

Well, although I’m not one to live my life by a list of “things to do…” it’s been a minute since I’ve updated this freakin’ thing. I’ll try and take a different twist on it, though. So here’s my list of five things I’m thankful for from 2004, and five things I hope to accomplish by the time 2005 rolls out.

The 2004, Who Could Have Asked for More? List
I’m thankful for…

1. the continual strength & will-power to be healthy. It’s been two years since I started un-doing what I let happen to me in college. I’m ~113lbs lighter and still going. Every day is a struggle, but I’ve learned to respect my health, read more about nutrition than I thought possible, and taken my overal physical shape as a responsibility not a curse.


2. the love of a great person. Six years in the making, somehow I convinced my best friend to spend the rest of her life with me. I’m not sure how I did it, but I’m not asking questions!


3. a steady, reliable job. While the specifics may not be ideal, I get great benefits and have the opportunity to work with some cool cats. I don’t take this for granted for a second…


4. great friends. period. Good friends a happy person make, and I certainly am no exception. While I don’t get to see many of them more than two or three times a year, I value every single one’s place in my life immeasureably. And having the coolest, bestest roomate in the world doesn’t hurt either.


5. being alive. Yea this may seem weird, but it’s true. There have been plenty of times in my life where I wouldn’t be thankful for this. But in 2004 I have been, and I pray that I continue as such. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life, but here’s to blindly bumping into things trying to find out!

The 2005, Things To Do to Be More Alive! List
I’m fixin’ to…

1. get back to my art. It’s been way too damn long since I’ve rolled out some prints, spent time in the darkroom or produced a piece for a show (no, you cannot keep showing the same print in different shows jerk!)


2. play more music. For all the listening that I do, I need to get back to my roots and play more music. I have a musical genious living with me currently and do not take advantage of that connection that we have. This makes me grumpy.


3. throw a big-ass party. I’ve never really thrown much of a party, and I feel like it’s been too long since I’ve seen all of my good friends together, happy off of the fruits of spirits. So before I get married, I’d like to have one last bash. Seeing my friends having a blast makes me tingly inside.


4. figure out the “next step.” While I resign myself to the fact that I won’t figure out the rest of my life, I need to decide what comes next. With marriage comes the opportunity to move forward, be that into a PhD program, a new job or a new city. Needless to say this one scares the bejeezus out of me.


5. practice balance. I’ve never been good at pacing myself or balancing. I pigheadedly throw myself into my work too easily. With a wife in the near future, this is not and cannot be a reality any longer. I pray that I learn to better balance my work, my freelance, my leisure, my spiritual life…and my sleep.

Here’s to hoping we all move forward this year!