« WOO HOO! | main | waiting »
Boxes and Arrows: Coloring Outside the Lines is a fine article by erin on the pleasures of a balanced life, inspired in part by my closing remarks from the IA summit, and in part by her wonderfully full life.
You may have noticed by my blog entires that I'm more interested in the act of being alive than ripping apart other folks interfaces or pontificating on usability issues... I see a trend in other blogs as well, including the reborn peterme.com.
I still love design, but really I love lots of stuff-- making crepes, planting tomatoes, reading Hemingway after a several year absence, cool wood floor on warm bare feet, african guitar, japanese drums, incandescent light-- again, the act of being alive is one full of pleasures if you can remember to pay attention.
I like pontificating on usability issues and rippiing apart interfaces.
Then again, I'm a bastard.
I've noticed this trend too. The interesting thing is that a lot of people, myself included, are at conflict talking about their life on their blog. I say it's your website or weblog, do whatever makes you happy. I've been trying to live up to that, but I know that my readers come to my website for web talk, not to hear me ramble about my not so exciting personal life. Then again, maybe I'm just not paying attention.
I'm on the bandwagon since last May about balance of work & life. When I go to surrounding areas of Asilomar, I used to think IA all the time(last year), and now I'm happy to say that I think about flowers/trees/beaches, missions, Carmel, and Laguna Raceway.
I think Po's book helped keep me in check with what I want and with what I want to do. There's a great article in NY Times about Moore's Law and Silicon Valley Life. It's like the need to have faster, higher performing transistors ended up translating into a lifestyle for its workers. It's definitely not humanly sustainable and eventual folks leave the area.
I don't fully agree with that. It's not sustainable for some people. For some other people, it's as key to life as air. These people live for competition or feel empty if not driven to action.
These themes, based on research done by Gallup, are described, in detail, in "Now, Discover Your Strengths." Short descriptions of the themes are also available at the "StrengthsFinder Center".
The importance of remembering your passion(s) becomes especially clear when life provides you -- or, as in my case, forces upon you -- an opportunity to make a major change. Having a rich non-job life opens up so many more possibilities for a next step.
Now, if I can only think of a way to list my Stitch 'n' Bitch experience on my resume without getting it thrown out by a naughty words filter :)
You have to keep up the fight. That B&A article might be super duper, but I'm not going to strain my eyes reading grey on grey text that isn't resizeable in 97% of today's browsers.
Most of the worlds problems would disappear if we learn to forget about ourselves and concentrate on the needs of others.