How to Rock Responsibility Without Being a Grown-Up

Posted by Amanda on Tuesday Jan 26, 2010 | Classified as: Personal Development | Sub-Classified as: money, responsibility

I suck at being a grown-up. I still watch Saturday Morning Cartoons, even on weekdays. I eat Reese Puffs cereal or Pop Tarts for breakfast sometimes. I love it when my nieces and young cousins come over because I secretly love to play pretend with them. I get lost in video games for hours and hours. I watch Disney movies in marathon sprints with April.

As a kid, I was Little Miss Responsible: conscientious of finances, attuned to the emotional well-being of my family, and especially mindful to the needs of my little brother. I desperately wanted to make everyone happy. It turned into a sort of complex for me.

When I moved out, I still wanted to make everyone happy but it was also the first time in my life that I had all the freedom I could ever ask for. (Take note: my parents were and are the most flexible individuals I know. I was not quashed under some totalitarian regime.) I had more money than I knew what to do with. I could go out all night and not have anyone worry about me.

In Which Responsibility (and Brains) Were Lost

I’ll be the first to admit it: I super failed at managing my money (and life) when I got out on my own. For all the life management I had when I was living at home, I didn’t apply any of it to the outside world. Poor money management led to bad eating habits, which led to weight gain, which led to depression, which led to worse money management, which led to worse eating habits, which led to more weight gain…

Damn it.

I was stuck.

At the time, I was just pissed off at myself for not paying more attention to my self destructive habits. I scared the people that loved me into thinking I was losing my mind. I scared myself into thinking that I was losing control. In actuality, I wasn’t out of control.

At eighteen, I rebelled against myself. I didn’t want to be responsible or strong anymore. I wanted to be a little kid. And yet, I had become the antithesis to my childhood self: self-indulgent, cranky, and manipulative. It was all about me, me, me and screw everyone else because Me, Myself, and I were pissed off at you. Something had triggered this response. It took a couple years of self pity and introspection to figure out why.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, says my inner self. Time to pick yourself off the ground and stop having a bloody tantrum. There’s more to life than trying to be one or the other. Why not try being both?

Responsibility: A Four Letter Word No More

It’s been five years since I moved out on my own. I’ve learned a lot since then. Re-learning how to manage my life has been one of the biggest – and most rewarding – challenges. I’ve determined that there is a way to maintain a childlike spirit while still rocking responsibility. And by I’ve determined, I mean that Mike (my husband) has determined.

Side note: Mike should seriously have his own blog. His ideas astound me. He pretty much always wins at life.

Responsibility implies respect: respect for yourself (and your partner), the life you’ve created, and the future that you’re creating. It doesn’t mean that you have to give up everything fun and whimsical in your life.

Responsibility can seem demanding, “You must do ABC in order to be an adult. Go sit in the corner and think about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.” In actuality, responsibility is a whisper in the back of your head that asks politely, “Remember to talk with your husband about that purchase. No, not because you have to but because you’re a team.”

Responsibility provides peace, not chains.

Responsibility extends to every facet of your life: money, relationships, goal-setting, making cupcakes, etc. It’s more about common sense than anything else.

What About Being a Kid?

Children are guileless. Energetic. Wild. Fearless. Ready and able to try anything and everything, especially if it means they get to have fun and connect with the people they care about. The knowledge of responsibility shouldn’t change that. In fact, responsibility should enhance that. We should be teaching our children that responsibility and maturity doesn’t mean that you have to be a grown-up. You can – you should – retain the wonder and delight.

It’s time for a parity shift.

How Can I Rock This?

So, are you irresponsible? Or are you too responsible? Is it even possible to find the balance between the child and the grown-up?

Hell. Yes.

• Take time out for whimsy: read a fairy tale (but don’t let yourself get caught up in unrealistic expectations); take a walk in the park and pretend that you’re in a magical land, where nothing is what it seems; daydream.
• Find a budget that doesn’t suck and stick to it. And by doesn’t suck, I mean doesn’t suck the energy out of you forever and ever. Look at it as an exercise in funding your whimsy.
• Create something. Anything. It could be a macaroni Jerry Seinfeld, a poem, or cupcakes. If you bake cupcakes… screenshot. Srsly. I <3 cupcakes.
• Manage expectations in your life: other peoples’ expectations of you, expectations of yourself, and expectations of other people. Do this for your work and personal life. You’ll be less stressed.
• Watch a cartoon from your childhood. Trust me: it’ll be so bad, it’ll loop back around to good.
• Collaborate with the people in your life: on decision-making, projects, love, problem-solving, raising kids, anything. Don’t bury your head in the sand and refuse help.
• Deal with it. Deal with your problems. Deal with your hang-ups. But don’t deal with it alone. Talk openly. Be honest.
• Be wild.

Let’s be rockstars, children, and wild flowers and still pay our bills on time.

Confidence. Rates. Nothing up my sleeve. It’s all business, baby.

Posted by Amanda on Friday Jan 22, 2010 | Classified as: Freelancing, Personal Development | Sub-Classified as: confidence, web design

violetminded opened its eyes at the end of September 2009. I didn’t see much in the way of business until 2010 rolled around. Yesterday, I started to think about why that was.

I had a portfolio with some relatively decent pieces in it from my days in design school. I even included some sweet print designs I’d done up for April’s art show. I mean, I’m not screaming from the rooftops that I’m a genius but I’m certainly no neophyte.

“Dude, you’re doing it wrong” or How I Managed to Trip at the Starting Line

I did a number of things wrong right off the bat.

1. No blog. *gasp*
2. No rates had been set.
3. Not enough diversity to my portfolio.
4. violetminded had no real identity.

The blog was remedied easily enough, with a bit of elbow grease and decisiveness. I fail at loving my designs enough to keep them so I changed the look of violetminded five times before deciding on this incarnation. I need to exercise restraint in order to not run and change it again in February.

It was the setting of the rates that was the doozy.

You’d think that setting yourself up to start bringing in cash flow is easy and maybe even enjoyable. In actuality, it’s like listening to 80s pop and being forced to drink bad vodka. I avoided it as long as humanly possible. I’m adverse to 80s pop and bad vodka, you see.

And so, violetminded sat around until the middle of October when I approached Kelly on Facebook (no secret here, I’m madly in love with Kelly & Cleavage, even though I’m married… shh… don’t tell Mike). My first step was to work with her, brand her website anew, and design her a fancy new blog. It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops but we had a beautiful product at the end of it.

When 2010 rolled around, I took it as the kick-in-the-ass that I required. It was time to buckle down, stop being just a freelancer, and start being a business. The buckle down required me to stop being such a pansy about rates. And then I realized what was keeping me from moving forward.

Rates & Confidence: BFFs in the worst way.

I confess.

Until recently, I had very little confidence in my own abilities. I’d spend countless hours perusing my favourite design websites and smack my head against the wall while muttering, “Why couldn’t I think of that first? ACK! Does this make me a sub-par designer? Maybe I am just a talentless hack.”

Whoa. Wait. Back up. Did I just think that out loud? Also, I didn’t actually hit my head against the wall. That would be potentially killing brain cells that I may need at some point. But I definitely have felt like it.

How can I possibly justify charging market value rates if I have no confidence in my own abilities? How can I market myself if I wasn’t entirely sure I would be interested in hiring me? More head-butting the walls in my head. More trembling before the mighty business model that I hadn’t really thought of.

Time to get a real job?

Hell. No.

Designing and coding Cleavage had opened my eyes: people actually loved what I could do. The site was all Kelly. It was a minimalistic beauty that came out of me; not out of one of my fellow designers. Just me. And Kelly. And a sexy design brief. We made sweet, sweet web design all night (and day) long.

Hot.

With my confidence boosted (thank you), I could see straight. Walls crumbled. Shoulders squared. Chin raised. Bring it.

… now what?

Rates. Oh snap. Almost forgot.

The rates. They gnawed on my brain, like wild Violet Zombies. The problem hadn’t gone away. It had only managed to seem like it had gone away. Sneaky.

At the beginning of the month, the business started rolling. I put away my confidence issues and started my research.

At first, I was astounded! I couldn’t afford to pay another designer $1800+ so how the hell did I expect people to want to pay me that kind of scratch for my services?

Everybody wants a killer design, especially after seeing one that they lust over. Problem is, nobody wants to pay for it.

Chris Pearson, Pearsonified

Nail. Head. Chris hit it.

It’s also why designers hate to set rates. It’s hell. What if nobody ends up wanting to pay us at all, let alone what we’re asking?

It’s a terrifying question. It almost made me want to give it all up for a “cushy” dev position at the company Mike works at (we make an awesome dev team, let me tell you).

Almost.

Company. Individual. Parity Shift!

Based on my experience, I have reason to believe that about 90% of you who just saw my prices thought, “Gosh, that’s awfully expensive!”

Well, you’re right, but actually, you’re wrong too.

You’re right because $1800 is a decent chunk of change – for an individual. You’re wrong because companies throw this kind of bread around all the time. They do so because they understand that crafting a brand holds a value that is oftentimes hard to measure in dollars and cents alone. On top of that, companies typically have a monetary objective behind the launch of a new design, so to them, there’s a foreseeable payoff.

Chris Pearson, Pearsonified

Dude.

DUDE.

DUDE!

I got it.

I can’t afford to pay that kind of scratch because I – not violetminded – am an individual. But my company could.

Pro tip: parity shifts are useful when figuring life out.

I sucked it up. I set my rates and then told my new clients that we should work together to make sure they won’t have to donate their liver to the black market in order to pay me. I’m under the impression that the liver is, y’know, important. So don’t let me bankrupt you or your growing business.

I just want to design for you.

Why? Because I love it.

It gives me warm, happy feelings of rainbows and lollipops and Alistair/Dragon Age. <3

Staring Down a Tunnel

Posted by Amanda on Saturday Jan 16, 2010 | Classified as: Everything Else | Sub-Classified as: family, health, love

Truly, she is the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known. Do you see her smile? Do you see mine (and yes, that’s me with long, blonde highlighted hair)? She does that to me every time I see her. A full-on guffaw, head thrown back and all.

I’m no stranger to death. I’m certainly well acquainted with chronic illness. For the twenty-three years that I’ve been alive, the woman in the picture – my mother – has fought to gain a foothold against her ever-growing list of illnesses: Cushings Syndrome, Nelson’s Syndrome, and Growth Hormone Deficiency are the longest standing.

I spent my childhood wrapped in tales of Middle Earth, trying desperately to escape from our tortured version of reality. It was fiction that brought us together, even when things looked bleakest; when the doctors told us that there was nothing they could do for her, short of experimental medical procedures (and thank the fates for Canada and our medical system).

Lesser people would have given up this fight. Lesser men would have left her to deal with her own problems. But my family – though flawed, just like everyone else’s – has proven that it takes more than illness, desperation, and sadness to tear us apart.

Family is the most important part of life. You fight to keep it together. Without it, life’s pretty much meaningless.

Chris Hoffman, my Dad

Standing at the Tunnel’s Mouth

Just before my wedding in the summer of 2008, her condition began to change. Her health had been relatively stable. But then her eyes began to tear up uncontrollably. She began to find it hard to breathe.

By the time November rolled around, she was diagnosed with a new disease: sarcoidosis. Sarcoid manifested itself in pronounced scar tissue on her legs and the formation of nodules in her lungs, which we thought was due to the plethora of medication she’s taken over the years. So, the doctors put her on corticosteroids, namely prednisone – a particularly nasty steroid that my niece was on to fight off infection during her chemotherapy.

We thought that by the time December 2009 rolled around, her lungs would have made considerable progress toward better health. Her neurologist in Vancouver had told her that if her lungs were under control by 2010, we could put her into Growth Hormone treatment, which had been a dream until now. In spite of our medical system, Growth Hormone is still considerably expensive.

However, much to our surprise, her lungs hadn’t changed at all. In fact, they’d gotten worse.

Adding Another to the List

I got the news last night that the worsening condition was due to a new disease on the block: pulmonary fibrosis, which means that the capillaries in her lungs are twisting and hardening. This can lead to lung failure, heart failure, and eventually death.

Last night, my heart was completely shattered by the news.

Today, it really sank in.

I did my research this morning. And then I broke down into uncontrollable tears. I’ve been faced with the notion of mortality many times before. On some small scale, I’ve even tried to accept it.

I really fail at accepting my parents’ mortality.

No child wants to accept the fact that, one day, her parents will die. In spite of overwhelming odds that she might not make it through the next surgery, she has lived. I’ve taken that as the rule, not the exception.

Every illness, including the new kids on the block, cannot be explained. We don’t know how she managed to get Cushings. We know that Cushings lead to Nelson’s. We’re not sure how Growth Hormone Deficiency played into it. And sarcoid is a mystery. Hell, even the pulmonary fibrosis is a variable to which there is no quantifiable answer.

Amor Vincit Omnia, Even Illness

Love conquers all.

When I was in school, the teachers would ask: “Amanda, who is your hero and why?”

I would say, without a hint of irony, “My mother. Because she doesn’t survive. She fights. She lives. She is my sunshine at the end of a dark tunnel.”

The kids would laugh at me. None of them understood the magnitude of her heroism. In response, I would tilt my chin defiantly and stand by my words. I knew her strength just as intrinsically as I knew my own. Her strength fed mine just as mine fed hers. We were are a team.

Today, when people ask me that question, the answer is still the same. It’s not a celebrity, or a historical figure, or even my beloved Shakespeare. No, it has been and always will be my mother.

Her heroism, as I’ve called it, can be defined as nothing short of superhuman. Others would have stopped living and only managed to survive.

Instead, she smiles. She laughs. She bakes marvelous cookies and sends them to us in Vancouver. She shops. She listens. She hears. She is concerned. She loves.

She isn’t prepared to give up without a fight.

Neither am I.

The Conqueror. No, not Conan.

Posted by Amanda on Saturday Jan 16, 2010 | Classified as: Personal Development | Sub-Classified as: geekery, independence, love

A few days back, I slipped out of my skin for a few minutes to share my trepidations with you. After a brief recovery period, I’ve decided to rip off the skin grafts (pleasant imagery, isn’t it? This is the problem with writing science fiction and horror: I thrive on the macabre and it sometimes *ahem* bleeds into my non-fiction).

Ronna got me thinking about Love today. Not the sappy kind of love that switches your brain off. Not even the frightening kind of love that makes you crazy with jealousy. She got me thinking about the kind of love where you’re sure you’ve got it but you’re not sure you’re willing to succumb to the Dark Side of Dependency.

The Battle Begins.

It would be easy to classify the Battlefield as a rivalry between the genders; I could draw upon old clichés and still make my argument work. In truth, the Battlefield is far more abstract and, by extension, far more complicated. Instead of this being a simple battle of the sexes, this is a war between love and independence.

Stay with me. It’s about to get geeky in here.

Love, the Dark Side of the Force, is passion wrapped in what appears to be chains. Independence – freedom from Love – is the detachment that the Jedi preach.

Love is the variable: wild, unpredictable, and constantly evolving. It thrives on our wild abandon but keeps its chains wrapped loosely around our waists. Independence – or, detachment within a relationship – is calmer but doesn’t press on us the way love does, especially at the beginning. Detachment is where we strive to be once we’ve found our Dark Lord waiting in the wing.

What do we do once the chains start tightening and we’re in danger of losing our individuality altogether? Refuse to submit to Love and lose out on all of its happy shiny qualities? Or submit, in spite of the creeping chains?

Submit and refuse the chains.

Once upon a time Every day, I struggle with this. I consider myself headstrong. Bold. Just a little on the wild side. I used to consider the bonds of love to be confining. I watched helplessly as the girls I knew were swallowed up by Love. They didn’t call anymore. It slipped their minds that we had a coffee date. They became an extension of their Love, instead of Love becoming an extension of their individual personalities.

The chains confused me.

After all, I’ve been in committed relationship after committed relationship for many years, until I stumbled into a dimly lit conference room and met my husband. During those relationships, I submitted, chains and all. The Dark Side may not be all that bad but be wary of losing yourself entirely; you’ll start looking like Darth Revan and that’s just not okay.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

- The Code of the Sith

I began to familiarize myself with the teachings of Independence – the Light Side. It was a long time coming. There’s no reason to smother oneself with imaginary chains when we’re the ones who put them there in the first place. We imagine that because we’re in love, we’re not allowed to retain our Self. But it is our Self that keeps us whole. Sane. Palatable to those outside our relationship. Just as the Light Side of the Force cannot exist without the Dark Side, Love cannot exist without Independence.

If we live inside Love entirely, we smother it.

If we refuse to submit to Love and seek only Independence, we are ultimately alone.

We must submit and refuse the chains. Find a way to keep our Love and our Self.

I love my husband – my Mike – entirely. We’re content to be together without having to acknowledge each other every moment of every day. We are happy being in the same apartment: I create, he games. We game together. We create armies of miniatures to take over the galaxy. It’s a beautiful, geeky thing.

I’m eager to know how you discovered the balance of Love & Independence in your life.

The Books that Sold Me on Design

Posted by Amanda on Friday Jan 15, 2010 | Classified as: Design | Sub-Classified as: books, scanner personality type

I read. A lot. Like, many books at a time. Might have something to do with my Scanner-ness. For me, there was never a time before design. As soon as I discovered how to make a website, I was hooked. The problem was that all I knew was the code. I didn’t get design at all. Blame it on my youth, as Jamie Cullum would say. When I started design school, I knew that I liked what good design felt like. I wanted to replicate that. I wanted people to feel fan-freaking-tastic when they looked at/interacted with my designs.

The problem: I didn’t know how to get from “Damn, I really love this” to “This is why I love this and this is how I can reproduce it”.

That’s when I started reading design books.

Oh. My.

Everything started clicking. Design wasn’t about making things look pretty. It was about so much more. There was a logic, rationale, and beautiful mathematical precision to design that I didn’t realize existed. My perception of design was irrevocably shifted. My zeroes were now ones. I couldn’t stop smiling. It might’ve freaked my husband out a bit.

The Five Essential Design Books on my Desk

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Before Bringhurt poured his knowledge into my brain, typography was a mystery that I sought to unravel. Why is proper kerning so important? Why should we care about the Golden Ratio? I consumed this book in the course of a week. And then I read it again. Nom.

The New Typography by Jan Tschichold

This is less of a “omg learn typography here!” and more of a “omg delicious history!”. It’s a bit of a dry read but totally worth it for the typography enthusiast in you.

Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Kimberly Elam

There’s a way to ORGANIZE TEXT? It’s not mystery?As it turns out: no mystery, only awesome guidelines. This book gave me the tools to recognize and understand why text should be laid out in a certain way, depending on tension, visual hierarchy, other design elements within the body of text.

Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide by Ellen Lupton

When I was brand new to design school, I read this book first. It was fascinating. I devoured it in one sitting. It was the precursor to Bringhurst’s text but it gives me pictures to fall back on if I can’t seem to get in the groove.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

DOET, as it’s referred to as by the author, is more about usability than it is about design principles. It talks about doors and why we can never seem to figure out how to open them. I liked that part. I always walk into doors. And walls. And anything else that’s supposedly stationary. DOET told me why. I’m still a klutz.

Bonus: 2000 Color Combinations by Garth Lewis

Okay, this is number six because it’s not really strictly a design book but it’s my inspiration. I get many colour combinations out of this book that I find surprising and beautiful. It’s worth the look, just for that.

_________________________

While books and tools are essential to any web/graphic designer’s job, it does not mean that those tools make a great designer. Time, energy, education (whether it’s self-directed or in an academic setting), and creativity work synchronize to fuel the design engine. The best designers have managed to piece it all together. It’s why you shouldn’t pay your friendly neighbourhood designer $5 to make a logo. I’m still trying to piece it all together. There’s always more to learn. Always better techniques. Always better ways to do one’s job.

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” – Julia Child

If you’re looking for another read, check out A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. It will change the way you see the world.

The Help Haiti Blog Challenge

Posted by Amanda on Thursday Jan 14, 2010 | Classified as: Everything Else | Sub-Classified as: #haitiblogchallenge

Kelly lit a fire under my ass tonight about Haiti.

I’m going to light a fire under yours.

I will donate the value of my Bad-Ass Design Package ($300 value) to the Red Cross on behalf of the next person who talks to me about it. Email me for more details.

How To Join the Help Haiti Blog Challenge. What You Can DO.

Remember Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge? It brought a LOT (700+) of people together. Which got me thinking…a blog challenge is a way to rally together and have a big impact through a lot of little actions.

Hence: The Help Haiti Blog Challenge. Let’s do it.

Here’s how we can share, together, so we can give, together, to our people who need and deserve help in Haiti.

1. Sign up for the Help Haiti Blog Challenge (below). Write about it on your blog and tag it “Help Haiti Blog Challenge“. Ask your people to join you and do the same.
2. Add the Help Haiti Blog Challenge badge to your blog.
3. Make your offer: I will donate ________ dollars to _________ on behalf of the next person who buys _________ from me.
4. Make your donation and tell us how much you donated.
5. Tweet about it using the hashtag #haitiblogchallenge. Update your facebook status with a request to pass on the message and the call to action. Send e-mails. Everywhere you are, online, talk about the Help Haiti Blog Challenge, tag it, and call your friends, family, colleagues – your people –  to action.

Let’s gather our online people to help our real-life people.

You can do this. We can do this. And it will be bigger than anything we could have done alone.

Pass it on.

On the Trepidation of Transparency

Posted by Amanda on Tuesday Jan 12, 2010 | Classified as: Literary Debauchery, Personal Development | Sub-Classified as: navel gazing, the craft

violetminded slipped into a new skin on Sunday. Design may be anything but transparent but, on the surface, it’s all out on the table. There’s a way to navigate around the site. Up in the left corner is the logo. There’s a place to read content. It’s mathematically creative. Unpredictable in its rationale but it all comes together. After all, there’s no way to disguise bad design as something else.

When I write fiction, I peel back my hardened exterior and let everything in (and out). My characters are the ones on the chopping block. If they screw up, I can fix it. I can be the referee: “Time for you to fall off that rooftop and I don’t care if you don’t like it. But no sexy time until I say so.” Okay, well, maybe I’m more of a bad mother than a referee. Yet, when it comes to vulnerability in non-fiction, I freeze up. I shy away. I don’t want to over-share in text. You can’t really retract something in text. You can’t will it away. The internet monster is an elephant like that: it has a long, unforgiving memory, unless you go and commit social networking suicide (there’s an app for that!)

Transparency is contradictory to a lot of the internet teachings that I’ve swallowed during my ten years online. Many of the best of the best in the community have often warned against sharing too much online. It’s unprofessional. Blogging is serious business. Only recently has it started to shift in favour of wearing your intentions on your sleeve and get right and out personal with your readers.

I was more than a little nervous when I talked about the Death pet. Not only was I addressing a topic that is awkward and uncomfortable but I was revealing a side of myself that I rarely acknowledged: a frail, scared little girl who still misses her Grandma nearly seventeen years later.

The women I admire within the blogging community are all about the transparency, the love, the truth. When I talked to Kelly about her talent for sharing her innermost secrets/fears/dreams when writing Cleavage, she told me that it was all about finding balance. There’s no way a person can live with their skin off. You have to find a way to give of yourself without losing yourself entirely.  And the writing that you’re really, really scared to push “Publish” on? Those are the posts that really matter; they’re the ones you’re obligated to write and share with your readers.

Truth is a beautiful thing, especially when it comes to the written word. The best kind of writing is full of microscopic truth: truth that can’t be proven but is felt. It’s honest. Maybe its witticisms are biting but they’re forthcoming. The writer gets her words out there and even if its fictitious (or the facts are bald-faced lies), the writing is honest.

Truth and transparency in fiction is easy. Truth and transparency in non-fiction is terrifying. Slipping violetminded into a new skin was a labour of code and design. Slipping out of my skin will be a labour of love.

If you’re looking for more on microscopic truth and finding your True Self in writing, check out “If You Want to Write” by Brenda Ueland. Truly exceptional book.

Slipping into a New Skin

Posted by Amanda on Sunday Jan 10, 2010 | Classified as: Design | Sub-Classified as: web design

I’ve been MIA for the past five days, trying to pull together violetminded’s design. I’ve been going through many different designs in hopes that I find one that I fell in love with. It didn’t happen until this one popped in my head. Content is still in the works and there may be broken links. The point is: this website now looks shiny, happy, and totally violet minded.

Go nom some brains. <3

Facelift. Makeover. Stay tuned.

Posted by Amanda on Tuesday Jan 5, 2010 | Classified as: Design, Everything Else | Sub-Classified as: scanner personality type, web design

See something different here? It’s temporary. I’m working on a brand new look for violetminded. It’ll knock your socks off. Enjoy the minimalism for the next few days. <3

Power On, Dude

Posted by Amanda on Tuesday Jan 5, 2010 | Classified as: Everything Else | Sub-Classified as: #mindfulist

What was your first thought as you powered on/opened up your computer today?

“I wonder if anyone liked/read/hated my post on Death.”

And then I checked my email. Another potential contract coming down the line. I have a few new Twitter friends. I made a few more connections on Facebook. People were genuinely concerned about why I was back in my hometown, sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, contemplating death and mortality and my navel.

I am mindful of the world today.