Today was a weird, weird day. It’s one of these days that you could have spend so much differently. And then you think about these parallel universes all the time. And then you try to weight if you would be happier in these alternative routes? Or if you went spent your time better? Or be productive? And you don’t come to any conclusion about that and keep being stuck in what you’re doing now and you feel like you’re not spending your time best.
Actually, it was an ok day. I wrote a blog post about tools to use color, and then I tweeted about it and that tweet is my most successful to day, which makes me feel a little bit sad. Because yeah, sure, it’s an ok blogpost, but it’s not the best one ever. It’s just about tools. It’s a collection. I didn’t need to be SMART to write that stuff. It’s an easy win. But it still gets more retweets than any other thing I’ve wrote where I tried to put some thought into it. I start to understand how “serious journalists” feel about clickbait articles. (Although I would argue that my post has its place. If I would stumble upon it, I would get some practical things out of it.)
And after pushing that post to the beloved wide web of this world, I went on a little tour around Georgetown. Georgetown is close to Foggy Bottom, where I currently live - and a lovely, lovely place. Red brick stone houses and lots of old, overly green trees line the streets; everything is neat and clean. One can see into the warm lighted living rooms of the houses. The white people who live there put candles on the dining tables, orchids in the vases and paintings on the wall. The closeby park has the exact right amount of wilderness and tidiness. And to conserve the most romanticized parts of the history, the light in many streetlights actually still comes from mini fires. I can’t imagine that this was always like that. There must have been a time when the citizens of Georgetown kept up with technology. These streetlights – I haven’t decided yet if they are lovely or cheesy.
Input? 3
Output? 6
Learnings?
It seems to be ok for the O’Reilly publisher that authors in their books bash other programming languages which are also published about by O’Reilly.
I really, really shouldn’t take external validation as a success measure. I should set clear goals and see if I achieved them. Which is hard, because “103 Likes” sounds more accurate than saying “I understand colors better now than yesterday.” Sigh.
Excuses are amazing and I should get more and use more of them. For me, the data vis meetup in Berlin was fun to organize, but also an excuse to get to know lots of people. I was forced to get to know them. Which was great. I should plan my projects with more regard to excuses.
It’s totally ok to speak to strangers in DC. I got approached here so much more often than in 1.5 years in Berlin and had lovely conversations.
Questions?
Should every one of my articles include some high-level new stuff and some practical advice? Maybe that’s a good compromise between “lets you take away practical advise” and “makes you think”. Maybe I should just move up and down the ladder of abstraction far more?