Hello, glad you’re here! As I mentioned last week, structure is my friend so with that in mind, here’s the game plan for the blog:
- The Post: weekly post featuring mentions and links to positive, helpful people and information that I’ve found really worth sharing. Anyone who knows me, knows I just love to pass good stuff along. There’s an underlying scientifically-proven benefit that sharing what brings you joy effectively affects your happiness levels the same way compound interest works on your finances. Psychology Today cites Albert Schweitzer, German physician and Nobel Peace Prize winner, as saying “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I’ll bank on that.
- The Weekly Wrap Up: (aka Monday vs Friday): goal highlights from the week and the outcomes / lessons learned.
The Post
This week I took a rejuvenating trip to Rhode Island to visit with Stephanie and Jo: two dear and very creative former colleagues, now officially “outside of work” friends. When work is no longer the tie that binds, it’s like graduating to a higher degree of friendship when we hit “outside of work” status.
Our three days were filled with exploring Providence, Rhode Island and its quaint seaside towns, shops, and galleries. All being visual designers, we equally share a love of finding beauty in what we see around us. We oohed and ahhed over packaging, beautiful light, paint colors of doors on historic homes, and possibilities of stuff we found in art shops like Mills Creek Natural Market and reuse shops like Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
The best part of the trip was our steady volley of ideas bouncing, that inspired us to prioritize working on creative projects that we parked. We even ended up setting up monthly “Makers Project” meetings to keep the momentum rolling.
I realized during my visit how each of my friend’s homes felt like them. Although Stephanie and I had seen each other almost daily working together through the pandemic, we hadn’t seen each other in person in three years. I’d never physically been in her apartment but it felt absolutely familiar. And she simply explained that it was because her apartment was her—and I know her and the stories behind so many things in her home so well.
My second Rhody pal Jo’s home also evoked the same sense of familiarity, comfort and warmth. Although Jo’s home is one of three (long story!) — each home feels like the other despite being on different sides of the Atlantic—calm, welcoming, and balanced with funny little moments and surprises tucked in.
A common thread between both is how each home reflects the considerate nature of the owner—considerate in terms of the kind nature of the friend but also how the experience of being in the home is considered. Each had a welcome mat, a clear entryway, and hooks for your things just where you needed them. Piles of fresh, soft towels, tulips bending graceful necks towards the windows. Thoughtful placements of objects like the chair set in front of a collection of kitty nose prints on Stephanie’s front window and a nautical-themed hat rack no longer gracing the walls of my son’s room greeting me when I closed the door of Jo’s guest room.
I hadn’t given my home much priority these past few years. Not having much time or energy or affection to dedicate to our apartment, the only real attention I was giving my home was listening to design podcasts like Little Yellow Couch. It sounds funny to listen to a podcast describing visuals, but it works! It’s kind of like a book versus movie experience—with a book, you interpret and personalize the content whereas a movie presents the material for you. Each Little Yellow Couch interview features a designer or artist and the impact of your surroundings on your happiness, creative process, and provides motivation for getting things done or simply making you feel better by introducing concepts or ideas that make you think in positive ways. The interview with Ingrid Fetell Lee the author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness is the podcast that got me hooked. (Check out Ingrid’s Ted talk for a good dive into how surroundings affect your well being. 13 minutes well spent!)
Prior to our apartment, we lived in a gorgeous 1860s-era Victorian with a wraparound porch. We sold our house way faster than expected and moved to a very modern apartment building with the intention of it being a temporary stop. Covid extended our stay from two to four years and although we have been looking for a house the past year—we hesitatingly signed another year-long lease. Thinking that feeling better in our space will lead to positive outcomes, I’ve added uplifting our home to the 52 weeks game plan. Inspired by yoga teacher Tara Stiles’ Feel Better podcast on how feng shui can bring more ease, abundance, love and joy into your life, I followed the prompt to leave the apartment so I could start at the front door with a user-centered perspective to gauge how each step made me feel. There’s the aesthetics of course—but also the ease or lack thereof that you feel in the space. Is the entryway clear or is it a dumping zone that depletes your energy as soon as you walk it? Is there a place to sit and take off your shoes? Can you simply function and do the things you want to do or is it just too much effort to move things out of the way?
I’ve taken a few steps since the walkthrough. I’d been treating the apartment as temporary but a fifth year of temporary time is still time worth counting.
The Weekly Wrap Up (Monday vs Friday)
So, as Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (80s icon alert) used to famously ask: How am I doin’? Well overall not bad! Overwhelmed at times, excited at others, happy every day to have time with my family but worried by the blur of days on the calendar. Here’s a few highlights:
- Goal: Buy new iPhone!
- Outcome: done! updating from an iPhone 6 has been a game changer.
- Lessons learned: Buy a case for the phone straight away! I was waiting to get a gorgeous one of a kind case from Carved and dropped my phone on Day 3. I thought the screen cracked but was so relieved when the Apple genius told me just the Belkin screen protector was cracked. The folks at Apple store at Ridge Hill were super helpful and I highly recommend the free learning sessions—I was the only one and enjoyed a private lesson. Thank you Belkin for a great product and excellent customer service to quickly send a replacement.
- Goal: Learn to blog!
- Outcome: Well, I’ve jumped around from Squarespace to Google blogger, had a look at Mailchimp and Wix, and landed back on Wordpress where I had a blog about ten years ago. A huge headache to decouple from Squarespace. That’s a whole blog post in itself. Takeaway: if you use Squarespace: write post drafts in google doc. Squarespace doesn’t autosave. Ugh.
- Goal: prepare taxes!
- Outcome: Done! And shocked how little we got back. The credits with the pandemic were helpful during the year but definitely not the refunds we used to look forward to.
- Goal: work with son on preparing for Sixth Grade tests on Greek history and the Nervous System.
- Outcome: Decent grades on both tests! Greek history focuses on logic and the Socratic Method; all about asking questions to identify the problem and the outcome you want, reviewing and improving. Greeks apparently were agile UX experts!
THANKS for reading through—and one last thought to share that I picked up from the email signature of a lovely person from the National Parks Service (that’s another post!) I hope reading through has made you feel good.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
Stay in touch! See you next week!
FIFTY-TWO WEEKS weekly 