Enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. 🍿
Quick Thoughts
Shorter than a blog post.
My last day in this job is tomorrow… my office is mostly packed up and I’m checking off the last few things off my to-do list. I’m realizing that on Monday, I start an entirely new job with an empty to-do list and an opportunity to rethink how I organize notes, track tasks, etc.
Some personal news… I’ve accepted a different position at the University of South Carolina as Director of Research Training in the Carolina Grants and Innovation Hub. I’m so incredibly excited about this new role and can’t wait to get started next week.
I’ll miss my team and coworkers. I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished at USC in the last 12+ years and it was such an honor to manage visual branding for a place that I love so much. I’m not going far, though, just moving a few blocks closer to the Horseshoe.
Saw a McLaren on my way home from the grocery store today, close to my home. Yesterday, I saw a Lamborghini. I recently saw a Ford GT. Where are all of these luxury sports cars coming from?
Spending the day working a graduate school paper. Camped out at a coffee shop listening to New Order and writing. Hopefully, I’ll get my first draft completed today.
This afternoon has been a long day.
This really resonated with me this morning. Seth Godin on Captaincy:
Captains set the agenda, create tension and lean into possibility. Captains aren’t just doing their job, they’re creating something that others thought was unlikely. They rarely have all the answers, but they’re very good at asking questions.
Seth Godin: “Stuck is a situation, stuck might be a problem, and stuck can be a choice."
I’m playing around with Affinity. Lots of good options to customize the interface. Some really nice typography features. But why can’t I export multiple artboards?
Completed: Hell Bent by Brian Recker 📚
I’m not the audience for Brian Recker’s Hell Bent. He’s writing for evangelicals (and former evangelicals) who are questioning their faith. I instead came to his book as a lifelong Lutheran who is baffled by how the Christianity that I grew up with has become warped by others who also profess to be Christian.
Brian’s thesis is that evangelical theology is so rooted in the fear of hell, that they struggle to see the message of love that is core to Jesus. I think it’s a pretty convincing argument. Brian breaks down all the ways that a fear of hell actually undermines having a relationship with God and sabotages healthy relationships with others. Faith rooted in fear leads to a very different place than faith rooted in love. I appreciated the exploration of evangelical theology, and all the personal examples of how Brian’s life changed when he started to question hell. It’s a very personal book. I learned a lot along the way, and was able to explore some of my own beliefs. I highly recommend that you check out Hell Bent.
Thirty years ago, Liz and I went on our first date. Crazy to think that we’ve been together for 3/5 of my life…
Watching Gamecocks Women’s Basketball. So much talent on this roster. I think they are going to be fun to watch this year.
Watched: Star Wars Rebels S3E5, The Last Battle 🍿
“Battles leave scars, some you can’t see.”
I’m conflicted about Canva making Affinity free. On one hand, Affinity will continue to provide a high-quality option to an Adobe subscription that won’t break the bank. But I don’t trust free software to be there for the long haul…
My peer-reviewed journal article, Logo Love? An Exploration of American Consumers’ Critical Attitudes toward Logos, is finally live on Visual Communications Quarterly. Excited to finally get this released.
When you start your day discovering a plumbing issue… it’s not a crisis, but it is something I’m going to have to deal with when I get home tonight. Hopefully, it is something I can just handle…
Finally made it to City Limits Barbeque. Even with all the hype, it exceeded my expectations. Outstanding.
Impressed with the new Methodical Coffee in The Bull Street District in Columbia. Really awesome to see this area finally coming together.
I’m taking the day off from work to just be a Ph.D. student today. I’ve got a paper to work on, I’m attending a research symposium and I’ve scheduled a meeting with our grad school coordinator about my dissertation process and comps.
Rian Hughes is one of my favorite type designers. This brief interview covering his 30 years of type design and promoting his Kickstarter was wonderful. (Also, I completely backed the Kickstarter!)
So if I’m reading the Apple/F1 announcement correctly, my F1 TV subscription will be rolled into Apple TV, which I already pay for as part of the Apple One bundle… so… once less subscription, I guess.
Interesting that Microsoft released some process images on Instagram to explain the thinking behind their new icons. They are correctly treating this icon refresh as a type of logo rollout and people who care about the icons will appreciate the glimpse into the redesign process.
Hate to see that South Carolina basketball’s Chloe Kitts tore her ACL and will miss the season. She’s one of my favorite Gamecocks, and hopefully, she’ll come back strong.
I never thought I needed to install a clipboard manager on my Mac. I was wrong. I absolutely love the clipboard history integrated into Spotlight on macOS Tahoe.
This statement from the ELCA bishops is strong:
Love insists on the dignity of every human being. Love insists on justice for the marginalized and oppressed. Love insists that the church must reflect God’s diverse, life-giving community. Love insists that we listen, speak, and act with respect, even in disagreement.
This article is about software development, but I think this passage relates to leadership, too:
When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.
An interesting post from Simon Sinek on leadership.
Most of us want to be noticed. We want our efforts to matter, to be acknowledged. But the best leaders I’ve ever met are the ones who don’t need the spotlight. They’re the ones who understand that leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. It’s not about rank or authority. It’s about caring for the person to your left and the person to your right. It’s about making the choice, every day, to help others succeed, even if no one is watching.
I thought college football fans were intense on social media. F1 fans are on a different planet. Goodness…
The economics of academic publishing are strange. The whole thing seems powered by lots of free (or low paid) labor in the name of service to your field.
Hanging out on the back porch and enjoying a glass of bourbon after a long week.