Originally published Welcome to 2019 on Medium.
I don’t do resolutions, per se, but when I get too busy, I fall out of the habit of blogging. I’m going to try to fix that. I won’t make any promises. The last year or more, I’ve been busy and have fallen out of the habit of writing. I’ve fallen out of a lot of creative habits I used to have.
Slowing down
I dialed back my Greenpeace work to focus more on my own creative things and to try to feel less busy. I’ll sit on the Steering Committee and give some advice from time to time, so I’m not ditching Greenpeace. I believe in Planet 4, and I hope to play some small part in it’s further development.
I was writing/explaining user stories to detail what users need and want from the software. These user stories are then refined and the development team can build the features. But there’s a problem with this approach, to transport the vision of Planet 4, we needed to tell a story that is more complex than a simple user story. That broader story has to be understood and then looked at through the lens of software development so that actual features can be built.
As the conceptual architect, I saw what Planet 4 could be. It’s been my job to hold the vision of the “final” product after it’s adopted and in use across the globe and make decisions that get us closer to that product. This vision is impossible to translate into the tiny user stories a software development team needs because the features change over time and based on context.
The Planet 4 Concept is a canvas of ideas and the building features is like putting a loop (that thingie jewelers use to look at diamonds) to a part of the canvas. The rest of the canvas is still there, but you’re focusing on a specific thing. This is important to remember because the risk of forgetting the bigger context of the software — the “other features”, the organisation supporting it, the supporters using it, the landscape of technology at Greenpeace — leads to building frankenstein software. Frankenstein software slowly becomes heavy, unusable and unable to be updated. Build for the future by making sure the rest of the canvas stays in sight.
Our lives are a canvas too.
Sometimes we zoom into a particular part of that canvas and we stay there. For me, I’ve been zoomed in on open principles, and their ability to make the world a better place. That focus will never go away, I’m a true believer.
But for now, I’m zooming in on writing. Writing for various websites about various themes. Writing for myself. Writing for you.
In January, I wrote my newsletter five times (one will be published today). I wrote about the We Are Open Co-op meetup that happened recently. I wrote about 8500 words, which put me over 70000 total, in my book Maybe Zombies.
I did other things too. I did a lot of research (writing isn’t just writing, you know). I went to museums and had lunch with friends. I built a portfolio website for someone. In an hour. I redesigned my book cover. I read a lot. I played games. I started posting lots of things to Patreon. I fell down multiple internet rabbit holes.
It’s strange to zoom into another part of the canvas we call life. It’s strange to decide that my energy currently belongs somewhere other than where it’s been. It’s uncomfortable to do this kind of work. But learning thrives in discomfort. I’ve written about that before.