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Hi friend,

How are you?

People talk about whether good ends can justify bad means, or at least they used to. Why do the math if you know the answer is null? What ends do modern justifiers achieve beyond more boots grinding more faces into more pavement? The wars don't end. The contracts don't end. The security theatre doesn't end. The occupations don't end. It seems that if anything, beginnings justify the means today, and continue to justify them so long as the aggrieved parties see fit.

Talking publicly about politics makes me feel vulnerable and inept, but I'm also not convinced that thousands of dead children (“a children’s graveyard”) is something I need an advanced degree to have an opinion about. My opinion? It's bad! As it was bad when America killed children and civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as it was bad when Mississippi whites lynched and desecrated poor Emmett Till, as it is bad that over 432,000 civilians have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars (so far!), as it was bad when we forced children to run from napalm in the forests of Vietnam. It’s all a kind of evil, if evil is anything, and it’s ugly and awful and sad that anyone would try to justify any of it. My toothless condemnation can’t shape this political moment, but I offer it nonetheless.

Hi friend,

How are you?

You may or may not have noticed my professional absence of sorts these past many months. Not writing to you, not publishing much, not having Intense Opinions on LinkedIn. Some folks noticed, and wrote me, and asked if I was well, which I appreciate and understand — I hope I’ve not worried you.

Hey friend,

Lamott’s shitty first drafts (PDF) are a good approach to writing, but they don’t work quite as well when, instead of writing one bad thing quickly and then improving upon it, you write one bad thing after another, four or five or six in a row, put ‘em in a little pile, and set them on fire. I know this because it’s how I’ve spent the last several hours.

I mean overall, yes, my little bonfire — this writing labor — has been good for my craft. Writing is writing, especially intentional writing, and it’s better to do it than think about doing it. But it was good in the way that an afternoon at the gym is good for my figure; I might be stronger than I was before, but the experience did not, in and of itself, get me laid. (Getting laid being the only motivation I am aware of to exercise voluntarily.)

A more productive and organized man than I might pick a theme early in the week, muse upon it reflectively through so many walks and meals and showers, capture notes here and there, even do a bit of research, and then treat his writing time as an opportunity to synthesize and improve upon his musings and notes. And sometimes I am that man. But not usually. Usually, I am the man that I am, a man who was once a boy who would start assignments with a borrowed pencil on the bus to school, and finish them in the hall before the day’s first bell. (And, perhaps most destructively, still get an ‘A’.)

Hi friends,

Historically, you all seem to like when I’m miserable. “Like” as in “engage heartily with the newsletter when”, not “am happy when”. So I’m sorry to say that I’m not especially miserable today. It’s warm enough out to call it so, and although I just had to walk through the concrete wastelands of the needlessly-differentiated ‘city’ of East Providence, it was a walk in warm weather, and that’s a very good start.

I’m writing from the other American turducken: a Starbucks inside a grocery store inside a strip mall. It was the least-horrible option in walking distance of the service center where the vehicle I don’t want to own is being serviced. The little light came on and I punched the mileage into a thing and it said it needed this and that and the other, based on how far it’s been driven so far, and I said fine, fine, let’s do all that. What will it cost? $200? $400? Sure.

I had hoped, today, to work from the new coworking space I’ve been part of for a few weeks now. It’s a 40-minute walk (or 40-minute bus ride, because transit here sucks). The exercise and routine of that commute, combined with a comfortable space with decent snacks and the presence of other humans who are at least pretending to work helps me feel focused and productive during the day. Real boon for my fussy old noggin and its myriad, fragile moods.

But I’m at the coffee shop, instead, which I also love, but can’t seem to work from as long nor as productively. To wit: I just had to pause and wipe my computer down because something near the espresso machine malfunctioned and geysered water all over me. True story! The coffee shop is only a 5-minute walk, so I pivoted here instead because it is colder than a witch’s tit.

I imagine one’s not supposed to use that phrase anymore, but also witches aren’t real??? You’re probably also not supposed to say that witches aren’t real, but I am not going to live in that world. Having grown up surrounded by the blizzard-prone dead winter earth of Nebraska’s many factory farms, our family had quite a few phrases in use for describing degrees of cold:

Hi friend,

I’m in an odd place of intentional professional procrastination. I have leads I am not quite following up on, potential workshops I am not yet selling, opportunities I am saying “thanks but no thanks” to, plans and commitments from my past self to my future self that I am now re-negotiating.

I say “odd” because, historically, I’ve ended up in this place accidentally, and for bad reasons. Grief and depression in recent years, unmanaged ADHD in prior years (well, and always the depression).

Hi friend,

I’ve decided to embrace my inner BCB — that’s Basic Christmas Bitch.

Now, I admire the Spooky Girls and the GHB’s — Gothic Halloween Bitches. I myself have a lot of black clothing, own more than one decorative skull, and have seen and enjoyed more B-movie monster flicks than your average bear.

But if I’m honest with myself? My aesthetic heart lives in Christmastown. I am my mother’s son, in this regard among many. It wasn't uncommon to find White Christmas playing in July, or hear Jonny Mathis wishing Merry Christmas in March, when she was home.

Hi friend,

I’m near Tucson as I write this, visiting at my dad’s place in the general spirit of celebrating Thanksgiving.

I am doing this before Thanksgiving because very little this year has happened the way I’d expected. You book a flight, things change, but you’ve still got the ticket, bought by a man with a different life. So it goes.

My accidental East coast home of the moment means a long flight to get here, which I’m not loving. And my internal sleep clock, which adapted admirably all year, even on an international trip, has decided: “Eff you, not moving.” So I’m a bit wigged.

Hi friend,

I’ve been in a tunnel all week. Figuratively, of course — I say of course because, as a broad category, literal tunnels are not a place I wish to be; open skies, please.

My figurative tunnel has been one of focus. Not in my personally historic way of a bipolar II-esque mania and/or ADHD hyperfixation (not claiming either diagnosis, but the study of them has been instructive in my own life). Rather, it’s what feels like a natural, this-is-what-work-should-feel-like kind of focus that stems in part from:

• having designed a clear schedule ahead of important deadlines,
• sleeping and eating relatively well,
• exercising,
• attending to my social connections, even through a difficult personal time in this regard,
• and having some clarity of purpose.

Hi friend,

I appreciate you reading these letters. It’s good to have an excuse to write, as yy writing practice helps me get smarter, in part because I’m constantly looking up words and concepts to see if my understanding matches the common one. For instance, I just closed a tab of Google results for the search phrase “lonesome versus lonely”.

The answers did not match my understanding, however; I’m being told that in American English, these two words effectively mean the same thing, with lonesome simply being slightly more antiquated and less common. I’ve always used lonesome to mean a broader, more ambient feeling than loneliness; loneliness in soft focus; a disquietude at not being quite as close to the people, places, or things you’d like to be close to; homesickness dislocated. It’s hard to be lonely in a crowded room, but one can be lonesome even in the crowded west.

The internet says otherwise, though, and that my distinction is not common. Ah, well! What’s fun about writing is that I’m only wrong in the vocabulary test sense of right and wrong. My understanding of the idea is what it means to me, even if it’s not what it means to other people. And perhaps by writing about it and using it in a more particular way, other people will start to see the word and therefore the world the way that I do. And if not, at least I’ll annoy some grammar pedants, which is its own reward.

Hi friend,

I don’t smell very good right now. I showered — too long, per the standards of anyone I’ve ever lived with, as is my custom. I didn’t put on deodorant, but that’s not unusual for me; my pits have never been particularly odorous. I’ve not exercised beyond a walk to the coffee shop in rather brisk weather. And all my clothes are fresh?

The smell has a hint of what I’ve taken to thinking of as adrenaline, which I often detect after a presentation. So while I don’t recall going short of breath or getting the shakes, that must be the culprit.

It’s not totally inexplicable, I suppose. Moments out of the shower, I got a call from the delivery men who were bringing my new couch and ottoman, replacements for the other new couch and coffee table with which I have been so briefly acquainted, that are on their way back out soon with my ex, the cat, and whatever plans I thought I had for living in Rhode Island.

Hi friend,

One of my favorite things to do as a public speaker is improvise something that draws an explicit connection between my talk and another session the audience has just seen. Sometimes it’s a simple verbal nod. Sometimes it’s new slides with fresh quotes. And sometimes, apparently, it’s racing about downtown Seattle over a lunch break in search of props to cosplay as the King of Swords:

It took a full hour and five dead-ends, but my sixth stop, Nordstrom, came through in the clutch with the above delightful combination of silky rainbow sword and sequined crown for my keynote presentation at Button. Unfortunately and hilariously, we repaid their service with a faux DDOS attack after someone dropped the link for the sword in the conference Slack.

Hi friends,

Folks seem to like my latest bit of advice for aspiring designers: Learn thinky things.

I coined this advice (with an unconscious assist from Marc Maron, I suspect) as part of an off-the-cuff remark during UX Content Office Hours. Someone asked whether content designers need to learn Figma, a popular tool for front-end design. I shared my response as a video recently, which ended up being wildly timely when it was announced that Adobe was acquiring Figma for an incomprehensible amount of money.

Learn Thinky Things is the gist of an only slightly larger sentiment, which is that I think designers are well-served to learn conceptual methods and frameworks — thinky things — and then apply those methods and frameworks with whatever tools are available to them. People seem to love Figma, and I’ve never minded it, but “using Figma” is not a description of a design activity.

Hey friend,

Sometimes the answer is so obvious and it took so long to get there that you want to smack your head and yell “Yadoy!”

I nearly yadoyed myself a few weeks back when I finally realized what I should make my podcast about.

See, I’ve been itching for a long time, likely over a year now, to start working on a podcast. It’s an obvious fit, right? I love podcasts as a medium, I studied and even worked briefly in broadcast journalism, I’ve got all the gear (and love excuses to buy more), and people seem to get my whole deal a lot better when I’m talking than when I’m posting on social media.

Hi friend,

I would have a healthier relationship with technology and social media — and be healthier in general — if it were easier to take the phone off the hook.

Alas, I don’t think any product teams are rewarded for maximizing DIUWMBAUAASPITF (that's 'daily inactive users who might become active users again at some point in the future’). Ad-supported platforms want your daily engagement, and subscription-based platforms want you to ‘receive value’ every month so you don’t cancel.

I'm just barely old enough to remember a world before most folks had email or home internet. We had an old-timey telephone in the farmhouse, with the literal hook the earpiece hangs from. I think it was just for show, but I loved playing with it. I can’t quite picture the phone we actually used. Or rather, I can picture it perfectly, but I’m also not confident I didn’t make it up. Anyway, our phone, real or imagined, was beige, or perhaps brown. Wasn’t everything, in 1989? It was molded plastic, anyway, with the classic banana shape that nestled neatly into its holder, and a long coiled cable that hung with more slack (ahem) every passing year.

Hey friend,

Me, I’m sad. But also not? Life is happy! That’s what I’m telling myself, because it’s true.

In a funny place where I’m feeling low, just right when I wake up in the morning, irrespective of any actual worries or concerns. But as the day goes on, I keep losing the argument with myself that everything sucks and is bad. Because, in fact, my life is pretty good right now. Other than, you know, the depression, and…uh, well, the planet. But still, logic is defeating chemistry for me most days of late, and I’ll take it!

Hi friends,

I woke up with a horrible mid-aughts acoustic alternative song in my head. Not that one, the other one. I vaguely recall hearing it a month or so back? And then it waited, waiting to strike.

While I'd rather not have started my day with this ugly earworm, I took it as encouragement to put on music I actually wanted to hear. You wouldn't think someone who loves music this much would need a reminder to listen to it. But sadly, that’s not how my dumb damn brain works. Over and over, I have to be reminded, or remind myself, to do things that I enjoy and feel good. Listen to music. Go for a walk. Make a pot of coffee.

So I make little lists, and try to look at them from time to time. I have a list of “Activities I Enjoy at Home” (ex: reading comic books, cooking new recipes, playing Nintendo Switch games) and “Activities I Enjoy in the World” (ex: seeing live music, bowling, pinball and arcade games). I have a list of foods I like to eat, and things I like to cook. My Google Map of every city I’ve ever visited is lousy with stars and hearts, any little place I went that wasn’t so bad, maybe even good, that I might enjoy going back to.

Hey friend,

I’ve been quite ill this week. Not sicker than I’ve ever been, but sicker than I’ve been in years. That was one small silver lining of COVID, I suppose. No concerts, but no common cold, either.

But I traveled recently, perhaps too soon, perhaps foolishly, and in the course of so doing I ate something or touched something or sat too near someone and now I’ve been shitting my insides out for a week straight, all while cycling through other symptoms that seem pulled from a hat each morning — fever! congestion! aches and pains! back to fever!

Multiple tests over the week say it’s not COVID, but who knows at this point. I’m isolating, and no one else in the household has symptoms, and there’s little else to be done. The illness feels all in my body, so to speak; I don’t have a headache or any fogginess, which means I’m thinking very clearly but not able to do very much (or get far away from a bathroom). This combination of misery and clarity has me feeling grateful, of all things. As literally and metaphorically shitty as this is, I know it will pass; It’s not going to kill me. I have a loving and lovely partner bringing me Pedialyte and comfort foods and just generally willing to be near me, gross as I am at the moment. And while I’ve had to punt on a few biz dev calls and wasn’t my best self for a few others this week, it’s not going to derail this increasingly wonderful and varied career of mine.

Editor's Note: As will become clear, I wrote all this last evening, and intended to send it contemporaneously. But the problem with using independent software made by good people is that they, too, might be hanging out watching the Super Bowl and not responding to support inquiries at the drop of a hat. Which is entirely reasonable. Anyway. There was a snafu, now we're here. You might not have read this email until today anyway. Stay golden, valentine, and read on.

Hello friend,

First of all, hey, hi, it’s your boy Scott. At some point in the last five years you joined my personal mailing list. When and how I decide to send anything to this list remains a mystery, even to me. I’ve re-platformed every three editions or so, which is to say, uh, every year. Ridiculous. But here we go again! I’m back on Buttondown — trying to reduce my reliance on slimy tech that primarily profits from tracking people and attention-jacking. I’m also on my own again (translation: not employed) and feeling like I really need to send you this much overdue letter.

Second of all, I know it’s been a bit. You might not even remember subscribing. So I’ll try not to take instant unsubscribes personally. However, I am writing this on my birthday. So if you’re inclined to unsubscribe, I mean, geez … on my birthday? Rude, honestly.