Asides

Week 2 (of 52): Welcome. Everything is fine.

“Sweet Sans Heavy” is the font used in this graphic from The Good Place. This font is designed by Mark van Bronkhorst and published by Sweet

Hello again! Nice to see you!

Everything is Fine! Really! I used the above comforting graphic from the TV show The Good Place as a screensaver to offset some pretty intense work stress. My family and I enjoyed the show so much, we named our beta fish “Derrek” after the character played by Jason Mantzoukas. We included Derek—unpictured—with our Christmas card signature—which prompted a lot of curious questions as to what we’d been up to during the stay-at-home days of the pandemic. It was a fun way to reconnect with people and startle my mom—who at 89 is still eagle-eyed and hopeful for more grandchildren.

I mentioned in Week 1, structure was my friend. It truly is. A nice dose of accountability—even if it’s time blocking a meeting with just me—works wonders.

So, Day 1, Week 1, of not working, I went to work. I actually physically went to work. I’m a member of a gorgeous co-working space called Hudco (first shout out of the blog!). Working and living in a two-bedroom apartment with a musician husband and a 12-year-old son made me incredibly grateful for the shared space—giving me a positive, motivating, and quiet place to go to and helped me return home as a nicer person.

And Day 1, Week 1, I started a nice fresh Google doc, and set to work. Without the boundaries of corporate structure, I needed to capture what I needed and wanted to to do because as fast as I thought work-filled weeks went; I had a feeling untamed weeks would go even faster.

The Tools

The Master List

The Project Plan

  • Any good project starts with a good clear brief and a plan. Mine’s pretty messy but having a central place to keep it all helps.
  • I’ll tweak as I go and check off (or remove) and the year unfolds.

The Post

  • Main idea:
  • Featured Friend / Company / Experience
  • What I’m Learning (Career-wise as well as for Sixth Grade)
  • Life UX:
  • Weekly wrap up (Monday vs Friday)
    • Monday: the list
    • Friday: how’d I do?
    • Lessons learned / notes for next week:

The Goods (necessary equipment / software)

  • Google docs: Oh Google, I’ve missed you! My company moved to Microsoft 365 and I’m pleased to be back to my Googley ways and see some great new features:
    • Very satisfying checkable check boxes for chronic list makers
    • Insert a Table of Contents to quickly jump to sections and save loads of scrolling
    • Shortcut to get to top of doc quickly
      • Mac: Command + top arrow or home key
      • PC: Control + up arrow or home key
  • iPhone 13: the beauty of procrastinating on new tech is that when you finally upgrade—wowsa!—did you know you can even pair a wireless keyboard to an iPhone? and mirror to a monitor? I may not be in such a mad rush to get a new laptop….
  • WordPress: I’ve bounced from Squarespace, to Google blogger, poked around Mailchimp and Wix, and now getting reacquainted with WordPress.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud: it’s amazing suite of online integration and worth the $52.99/month. Light years ahead of the CD bundle installs and serial numbers back in the day! New “Portfolio” application is a user-friendly tool for quickly creating an online portfolio.

Subscribe and stay in touch! See you next week!