It was just a random July afternoon in the summer of 2001. As usual it was impossibly humid, and as anyone in the Ohio Valley knows, it was just one of those days that you pray for sundown, for the release from the disgusting grip of thick air. I was gone working one of my two jobs, likely enjoying the free window-unit air conditioning somewhere. But two of my roommates were off teaching me a lesson, and sweating their asses off in the process.

“…instead of just whizzing on the floor, which would be the easy decision for him, he cobbled together another plan…”

Who knows how it got decided that we needed a dining room table. If I were to guess, I’d say it was Seth who came up with the idea first. But all I know (as the story was told to me later while taking in a porch swing session) is that it ended with the two of them buying a beat-up table and chair set at the local Goodwill and walking it home, across downtown Norwood, Ohio in the dead of this horrible heat. Sure they knew it was an idiotic plan, that it wasn’t ideal. Sure they were glad when an old farmer spotted them (almost home) and gave them a lift in his pickup. But the point of this, the lesson that seven years later still strikes me deeply, is that neither of them cared about the obstacles. They had something they wanted (a proper dining room set), and it didn’t matter what stood in the way.

My dog even seems to understands this. Locked inside my office for an afternoon, away from his normal means of communication, he doesn’t back down from a challenge. Normally he lets us know he needs to go outside on a business trip by ringing a set of bells on the back door. In the office, however, he’s a full floor and one closed door away. So instead of just whizzing on the floor, which would be the easy decision for him, he cobbled together another plan: smack the crap out of the doorstop with his paw (BOING!) until I turned down my music enough to pay attention. He had a goal and worked with what he had at hand (or paw, as in this case) to achieve it. He didn’t even give up on the first three or four tries to get me to notice, either.

I’m amazed. Be it my dog or my friends, I have impressive examples of ingenuity and resolve in my life that I am inspired by. Sure, they’re humble stories, but it seems as if as of late it is just these very small, seemingly trivial tasks in my life that I’m finding harder and harder to gather up the will-power (or courage?) to attack.

I never want to become that apathetic, lazy, uninspired man who whines at the thought of fixing a problem or stops at the first hurdle or kink in the plan. I don’t want to put off fixing that air leak in the door until “later” so that I can watch TV, or make excuses for why I’ve been remiss in consistent 6-day-a-week exercise. The list of problems, both small and large, grow longer every day. Yet somehow I’ve slipped into a pattern whereby the list of excuses is challenging it in length.

If I want that dining room table badly enough, then dammit I’ll find some way to get it home. And peeing on the carpet isn’t the answer, either. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as the saying goes. The first step is kick-starting the will.

Not trendy.
Lame.
Silly.
Childish.
Looks like it was designed by a third grader.
Generic.
Unsophisticated.
Not modern.
A step backwards.
Unprofessional.
Boring.
Lacks creativity.
Looks like a second-class community college website.

The main reason I’ve been less active ‘round these parts is that for the better part of four months, I’ve been working on a project for my 9-5 that’s been a bit consuming, to say the least. I volunteered to do it, as I am paid to work on a specific area of the university’s sites, not the main presence. I asked for it. And I got it.

Art critiques supposedly bled out of me any sensitivity to my work. The memories of my first crits are seared into my skull, moments in my life where I learned the depths of people’s scorn and the pain of purposeful, directed scrutiny. I thought I came out the other side with more than a diploma, but rather a coolly-detached appreciation for rational feedback on my work. What I’ve learned this week, however, is that I’m much more sensitive than I thought. Or perhaps I’ve been designing in a bubble for the past six years.

I opted to place a mechanism on the new homepage to allow for public feedback. I felt badly that “their homepage” was being up and changed suddenly and without warning—akin to sneaking in and moving around the furniture in someone’s house. In higher education, people claim a sense of entitlement to their school’s online presence. It serves as everything from their dashboard-connection to webmail to a daily news source to a shiny online marketing brochure. And just as people are possessive about their furniture arrangement, they are as well about their homepage. Violently so. You would have thought we had murdered someone’s grandmother with what we did.

Sure, there’s been plenty of good feedback. Yes, most people that take the time to spout-off usually have something negative to say. But what I’ve taken away from this (besides not wanting to “voluntarily” take on such an enormous project ever again, for no extra compensation or recognition) is that despite all of the analytics and reports and trend-watching, no matter how prepared you think you are going into a major design project, with the web you’ll never please everyone. Or maybe that’s just a life lesson in general.

The beauty of the internet is that it is so open, transparent and diverse (at least currently). The curse of it is that it seems to have made every Joe User with a mouse and an IP address an expert. And when you think that you’re taking your million-plus page hits per month and shooting right down the middle in all of your design decisions, you need to realize that you’re bound to alienate or offend at least 50%. Too dark. Too white. Too busy. Too plain. There is no consensus, except perhaps that the majority believe that they themselves (or cousin or friend or coworker) could have done it way better than you.

And to say I’ve been a bit disillusioned by it all would be an understatement. It surprises me just how much this has taken the wind out of my proverbial sails. I made compromises in the design because of bureaucracy to the point that it’s no longer something I’m proud of. And I feel like I’ve failed the “everyman” user that I’m supposedly the champion of. I’ve given up countless hours of personal time, vacation time, time at home with my wife. I’ve sacrificed my health (and sanity) for this project…a project I’m not even assigned to do. And for what?

Some days you get cut. I’m just not sure if this is deep enough to call it off.

This past weekend The Wife™ and I went to a certain baby megastore where, apparently (as this is news to me), you do not buy babies. Rather, you buy stuff for babies, which seems confusing given the name of the store. I find their brand and subsequent marketing tragically flawed.

Anyway, Babies “R” Us (marketing department take note, your URL hints at a much better name for your company, one devoid of awkward grammatical ponderances: Babysaurus. Feel free to add an exclamation point for emphasis. E.g. Babysaurus!)…oh hell I’ve gone off again. Babies “R” Us (curse you, quote marks!) is a Dude Black Hole store. By this I mean that the second a man walks through the door he feels entirely useless, unable to form cohesive thoughts, stripped of rational ability to give opinions on things. Similar Dude Black Hole stores are Victoria’s Secret and Hallmark Card Shops (or ‘shoppes’ if you’re fancy). I have refused to go in to the latter examples for years for fear of panic attacks, and it appears as if Babies “R” Us might get blacklisted as well.

What struck me about the store (beyond not selling babies. WTF?) is just how DAMNED expensive everything is. Standing in line to buy two small gifts for a friend’s baby shower, we were surrounded on all sides by other customers who were unaware that they had handed the cashier their AmEx card to swipe $548.21 in plastic crap. Strollers. Combination bouncy/swing seats. Some whirly-gig thing that connects to your iPod and spins the kid in a wide arc (baby autoclave?). I swear we were the only ones in line that got out of the store with a purchase in the two digits and that didn’t require an F-150 to haul home.

“…and it appears as if Babies “R” Us might get blacklisted as well.”

Thankfully, The Wife™ and I seem to be on the same page about this whole baby thing. We have nieces that have every toy imaginable, yet true to a child’s form, there will never be enough new playthings to satisfy them. So I say this now, I plan on being as simple as possible when it comes to losing my retirement savings buying stuff for the baby. No baby wipe warmers, no diaper trash compactor, no baby autoclaves. Finding the delicate balance between properly caring for your child and not succumbing to the default mindset of consumerism and impracticality…it’s not an easy line to walk. But I hope we can meet the challenge head-on and eventually end up with a humble nursery that will be a safe, comfortable environment for them to spend their first few years in, dreaming and growing to see the world.

There are a few non-negotiable things already on the “to buy” list. I don’t want to spoil it just yet, but let’s just say that it involves a dog harness and a baby toupee. And maybe an iPod-connected baby autoclave.

I can already tell that The Wife™ and I are in for one long, knock-down, drag-out fight about the name of this kid. And little does she know that she is SO going to lose.

When we first found out we were pregnant, I asked The Wife™ if we could not find out the sex of the child and, as she usually is, my better half was kind enough to oblige me despite her own feelings on the matter. The problem that this creates, however, is that we have to come up with two sets of names instead of just one, which is mildly akin to performing telekinesis or memorizing every Wikipedia entry.

The central issue here is not that we can’t come up with a list of possibilities, it’s that The Wife™ and I don’t tend to agree on names. Or maybe it’s that anything I come up with is met with a, “Eh, I’m not into that one.” Take the dog for example. The day we got Jonas, his name was Jack (named after Jack Bauer from 24. LAME.) The Wife™ didn’t really like Jack, but also had no real suggestions for changing it. This is her strategy, dissent and criticize but offer no help. So, in this case, when she left me that night to go to an overnight bachelorette party, I picked the name Jonas. Simple as that. I merely informed her of management’s decision the next morning. That’ll teach her to stick me home alone with Baby Mephistopheles.

Finding possible names for your kid is a more daunting task though. Dogs don’t have to worry about their names being truncated and turned into a myriad of mocking nicknames. Dogs don’t have last names that you have to worry about “matching” with. You also have a lot more of a range of acceptability with a dog, because just as it’s okay to name your dog Jack, you can also name it Mr. Barky von Shnauzer. Naming the kid Sargent von PoopyPants likely would result in years of expensive therapy. Or so says The Wife™.

So we’re now in the middle of working on our lists. We’ve both been reading name books (which is like reading the dictionary for giggles) and jotting down notes but it will likely take us until July to decide. Actually, I plan on pulling a Jonas and waiting until she gets up to go to the hospital bathroom to sneak out, find a nurse and tell her the kid’s name that I’ve decided on.

She’ll still be doped up on pain killers. By the time it wears off it’ll be too late to be angry. We’re both to cheap to pay to have a birth certificate changed.

Nine posts in December. That’s it. How utterly embarrassing. It’s safe to say I’ve been a bit derelict in my attention paid to denyingphoenix as of late, and for that I wholeheartedly apologize, Internet. Now please don’t make me sleep on the couch anymore.

Since Thanksgiving, things have seemingly gone haywire both at work and at home. Somewhere between, enormous projects and breaking electronics, illnesses, holidays and the impending death of a certain portfolio site, I’ve lost the desire and inspiration to sprinkle any fairy dust around these parts.

Winter has always been cruel to me, and disregarding the fact that today’s high is supposed to be 74°F, this year seems to be shaping up no differently. But as I started this site as an both a creative/emotional outlet and barometer for myself, I need to find my way back to it.

Here’s for hoping ‘08 is better than ‘07 was. Or maybe just that I’m a better person in the next 365. Or both.