October 2005 Archives

You know, I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting life to be an experience where everything is okay and comfortable and uncomplicated and full of opportunity and hope. Those wants juxtaposed with actually living a life in this world make for many moments of real confusion, hurt, frustration and more depression and disconnection than I’d care to admit.

It’s not even like shit waits for other shit to stop happening to start happening, you know what I mean? Everything’s concurrent and events usually don’t queue up neatly, one behind the other. All of my friends seem to be going through their own trials and tribulations while I begin an exciting new job. I’m leaving a difficult job just as it becomes easier and as its purpose becomes clearer to me. I have an idea for a fantastic website, but I can’t remember the last time I picked up my camera. My podcast series makes me want to DJ again, but I can’t remember the last time I picked up my camera. HRLM is almost over and I’m getting sales inquiries about those pieces, but I can’t remember the last time I picked up my camera. And we keep getting suckerpunched by white people. And this rain … sigh

It began as a love movement; the shared dream of a husband and wife to help more of the world find its voice. It has since given hundreds of thousands millions of people a substantial tool for sharing their thoughts and for connecting to others. I know there’s probably no real way to quantify this, but here goes: it has inspired developers to create better software while simultaneously challenging the notion that ‘better software’ automatically equals less accessible (and more expensive) software. It’s the content management system that runs the show up in here and the one that I recommend to everyone who asks me. It’s Movable Type. I went from hand-coding my site to LiveJournal to Blogger (and calling it a ‘blog’ like everybody else) to ending up with the cream of the crop.

So, thank you Mena and Ben (and Anil and Brad and Jay and Barak and Loic and Joi and everyone at Six Apart who makes it possible)! Thank you for inspiring me in so many different ways. I’m about to embark on what I believe to be a wonderful new moment in my career as a web designer, but my dream job is still to be speaking Portuguese one day as part of Six Apart Brasil … *sigh!*