February : 2022 : Kelake

Decline

I couldn’t find my wallet yesterday, usually it’s my keys, or some other item necessary for interfacing with modern society, like a mask. In winter I wear much the same, day in and day out, and the slight deviation yesterday sent me for a loop. I left my wallet in a hidden pocket I forgot about.

It’s common to joke when you reach middle age about early onset of dementia, except it’s no joke. As you get older you might settle into a routine, or you get busy, stressed, or all of these things. Throw in what has now become banal, the pandemic and the misguided protests against public health, and I guess I could be forgiven for being absent minded. But I can’t help but think that my life has been considerably dumbed down.

Living in fast paced cities where everyday presented some challenge, constantly needing to study a hard language, using that language daily, the stresses of work and communicating with people, intense exercise and an international travel habit that entailed no planning whatsoever made for a more nimble mind.

There are few such challenges these days. Life here is pretty sedate, with the pandemic even more so.

The only answer I have to this, is to try and find something new that I curious about, but have little experience with, and try to gain some expertise. I’m just not sure what that will be yet.

Story Writing

There are a number of opportunities for growth when working for yourself, a lot of goals to accomplish, a decent breadth of tasks to finish. I’ve ticked many boxes these past couple of years but there were still a few things I wanted to try before making any decisions on the future of our work. One was music composition, and the other was story writing, which I wrote about in October.

Writing children’s stories has been a slow process, and though I have been writing scripts, rewriting dated and often violent fairy tales consistently, original writing was rife with procrastination. So inefficient was my writing that despite finishing a number of stories, I decided that it wasn’t going to be viable over the long term.

Except that I started to receive reviews and email’s about the stories I wrote. Kids started asking when the next chapter was coming and this morning I received a couple email, one stating that their kids were hooked on one story, and hoping there would be another very soon, and another whose son felt “understood, less alone, validated, and comforted” after listening to one of my stories.

I’m a bit overwhelmed.

I’m not a writer, but there seems to be a greater opportunity to connect with children via podcasts than I had really considered before. It would seem it’s worth finding a way to get over this procrastination issue, take time to improve the craft, and … get an editor.

Disagreements

Disagreements and differences of opinion are part of what makes a place vibrant, interesting and at times annoying.

You like tea, and think coffee tastes like shit. I love coffee and think tea tastes like pee. But we both can agree that sitting together drinking our favourite beverage leads to some interesting conversations.

But how do you discuss an issue with someone when their opinion has been formed based on complete fabrications? Fabrications from sources they trust. And they believe that your sources are complete garbage.

In business, decisions aren’t always based on good research, data, or any research at all. Sometimes good design loses over another approach. The results can be a loss of money, maybe a lot, or maybe nothing happens at all. In the public sphere that could mean a loss of life.

There will always be complete assholes of course, but how do you bridge this gap when the issues are important?

What am I? And do I care?

My son asked me last night what a graphic designer does, and I gave him the standard definition that floats around visual communication and the mediums in which they generally work.

He then asked me if this is what I do or what I call myself.

I said no, though it once was close to what I once did (my concentration in grad school was also visual communication) but it’s not a title that I would have or would use now. I left it at that because I didn’t really know what else to say. He knows what I do, but I guess as part of this foolish CEO class they take in high school they discuss job titles and he is trying to find how to fit my square peg in their round holes.

The work I do today ticks a lot of boxes for me. We are a success in so far that we have built products that people love. Unfortunately, despite making an income that should be enough (but isn’t), from work that I could continue doing till my mind turns to mush, I made a decision a while back that the likelihood that I can continue is pretty low.

Last year I ran a research project, interviewing 15 different people, local and remote, to get a sense of job prospects, their methods of success, and how I might now fit in the grand scheme of things. The reason to do such a thing was I guessed I would soon need to become an employee, not an employer. I analysed and abstracted the results, which in turn gave me action items. But I didn’t take action because I was having a great time doing what I was doing.

I don’t care much for job titles, if you ask what I do, I just say I make products for kids. But many employers seem to care and computers that scan CV’s care.

Much of the work I do still involves design at some level, but I’m not a graphic designer, nor UX, nor a product designer (whatever that is). Nor am I podcast producer or audio engineer. I’m certainly not a CEO. None of these levels of abstraction seem to work with me; maybe I’ll just string together a bunch of words like they used to do years ago in startups like (but add product and UX for SEO): Dream (Product) Alchemist, (UX) Happiness Engineer or a title used years ago when I was at the Creativity Lab, Creative Disruptor.

Optimism

After our last set of restrictions from the CPHO I wrote a missive about what I had hoped to do to maintain my sanity midst the never ending deluge of negativity (and rage) that seems to accompany life on the Island of late.

With the exception of getting outside, I still am not a fan of winter, I’ve read a few books, exercised far more and have paid increasing attention to the food I eat.

I’ve also disconnected from most of social media, with the exception of Instagram, the Internets greatest source of unrealistic body image expectations.

Despite this I’ve found it increasingly difficult to maintain a positive attitude. I’m generally not what you would call a positive person on the best of days, but the current environment makes it hard to maintain my usual salty/not salty equilibrium. Let alone make the kind of change needed to transform myself to having a more positive outlook.

Peter linked to Charlie Angus On Getting from Darkness to the Light which helped for a moment.

I think all I can do is acknowledge the negativity, move on and keep achieving the goals set in front of me, and hope that the sun of Spring and Summer bring with it a greater sense of optimism.

Literacy

When you sit and wonder how so many people can believe what they do with regards to all matter of topics, but most importantly these days, public health, it’s important to first ponder the following statistic:

“For years, we have seen data that says 46 percent of Islanders struggle with the basic literacy required to work and thrive in our knowledge-based, digital society,” – source

“In 2003, it was estimated that 40,000 (nearly 43%) of PEI residents who were 16 to 65-years old had literacy levels below the desired level of coping (Statistics Canada, 2003, p.107)”

The problem doesn’t seem to be improving.

Now couple this with the algorithms behind social media platforms manipulating people with disinformation and we can come to a possible understanding of why we are where we are.