Now

Updated at 2:32 PM on Sunday the 12th of January 2025, from Seattle, Washington. It was 43℉, calm, and mostly cloudy outside.

Here’s hoping I update this now page at least once a month in 2025. I only updated it two or three times in 2024, which is understandable seeing as I spent the first half of the year going THROUGH it.

Quick recap: In early 2024 I experienced my second layoff in as many years. A trivial hiccup in the scheme of everything going on out there, but bigger problems don’t always make small problems feel as trivial as they might be. My nervous system was not happy. I struggled to keep my focus from spiraling into a doom-loop. I spent time with lovely friends who picked me up and gave me reasons to stay connected. Then I moved from the east coast to the west coast for A Job.

Ballard

I left Portland, Maine for Seattle, Washington in July last year. Packed everything I could into a 8’ by 5’ by 7’ moving container, cleaned out my lil’ apartment, and gave away or sold anything that didn’t fit.

Sight unseen, I moved to Ballard, a quiet part of Seattle, just north of Salmon Bay waterway. It’s nice here, and the bike or bus commute to the office is the perfect distance to listen to a podcast, clear my head, or catch up on my todo list.

There are a handful of reasons I picked Ballard. 

• One, it’s close to Green Lake, where I spent time in 2007 en-route to Thailand. As long as I’m by the water with some good walking paths, there are much worse places to be.
• Two, one of my internet friends (Hi Yvonne!) told me they like it here. We’ve had wonderful conversation, and that alone makes the neighborhood choice a good one in my book.
• Three, I heard there are good community vibes in Ballard (there are good community vibes in Ballard!).

Maine

I was able to return to Maine for about six weeks to wrap up 2024. I got to catch up with friends, get and give a lot of hugs, and soak up another Hallowell holiday season. I am so grateful for my Maine people. All of you. My heart was so full on the flight back. Even if my head hurt from celebrating the new year.

Book-shaped thing?

In January 2023, I tweeted, “I’m writing a book-shaped thing about systemic trauma, cybernetics, maps, naming things, generalizing design strategy, and more.” And, of course, I promised, “It’s gonna get weird.”

I’m happy to report that in the two years since, it has indeed gotten delightfully weird. The conversations about what cybernetics or design strategy have to do with systemic trauma have been meaningful and nourishing. The questions have been challenging. The research and reading has spanned countless topics, from family systems therapy, to management science, social engineering, evolutionary biology, psychiatry, religious studies, economics, oral histories, systems science, psychology, information sciences, and beyond.

It turns out I’m not really writing a book-shaped thing anymore. Or at least I don’t think I am. Instead, I’m working with a handful of colleagues to embark on something further afield. We intend to soft-launch a foundation to incubate and steward a number of initiatives, to:

1. develop a transdisciplinary curriculum for all ages, rooted in cybernetics and related fields
2. incorporate partnership mindset into strategic decision-making frameworks and enablement programs
3. pilot an advisory lab to facilitate nonpartisan mission-oriented innovation (à la designing missions) rooted in transdisciplinary approaches to strategic partnership

It’s shaping up to be an exciting year. I can’t wait to continue this journey with all of you.

Is there really bluesky behind all those clouds?

At the end of January I’m co-hosting a conversation with Abby Covert at The Sensemakers Club about the future of social media.

As our understanding of advanced technology evolves, it’s important to steward our attention and cultivate that of our communities. Having grown up in a rural area, I owe my career, many of my dearest friendships, and certainly a broad network of archetypes and inspiration to folks I’ve followed and met online. Of course, there are many important relationships I value deeply that originated offline. But that doesn’t diminish the fact I can’t imagine who or how I’d be in the world without having such a diverse list of people and organizations to learn from almost every day.

When social engineering—predicated on the predatory economics of behavioral advertising—crashed into my online social sphere, there was a vibe-shift, both online and offline. Communities-of-practice and nourishing information sources I took for granted disappeared or were trampled by The Algorithms. Polarization boomed. Information warfare accelerated. Tactics were deployed by organizations with massive resources to develop addictive interfaces and content libraries, intended to make “users” dependent on little dopamine hits, regardless of the consequences, to keep ad impressions flowing. And there have been consequences. Oh, have there been consequences. For our mental health, for our relationship with nature, for our engagement with our local neighborhoods and friends.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of being a pawn in information war-games played by politicians, corporations, influencers, governments, and big technology companies the world over.

Fortunately, the Bluesky team is on the case. Bluesky Public Benefit Corporation spun out from Twitter with the mandate to develop an open protocol for social networking to address the pathologies inherent to closed platform economics. Bluesky Social is a proof-of-concept app on top of the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) that proves we can benefit from a healthy online social atmosphere, unburdened by insular closed platform economics.

We don’t have all the answers, but there a good lot of folks asking better questions these days than a decade ago. I believe in Bluesky’s mission, and I look forward to the dialogue to follow. It's been a lot of fun watching The Sensemakers Club blossom over the past year from afar, and I've looked up to Abby for many years, so it's an honor to have this opportunity.

Keeping the lights on

I get a lot of questions about what it is exactly I do for work these days. I’m a Member of Technical Staff and Senior User Experience Designer at Pure Storage. Pure makes energy saving all-flash data storage appliances. I’m glad I landed on a team with such a great culture at such an important time. I work on the Digital Experience team, where I spend my days doing design research and user-centered design to support our product and engineering teams. It’s a lot of fun.

Until next time

This was an extra-long update because it’s been many months since I’ve updated this now page. I hope to make more frequent shorter updates moving forward. Thanks for reading, and I hope you and yours are well. This year has already been quite an adventure.

Say hi

Please do reach out through Bluesky, Signal, or email if you'd like to do coffee, drinks, dinner, or a call sometime. As always, I'm here for the conversation and community. ❤️

What's a now page?

A now page is an attempt at outlining things I might tell a friend I haven't seen in a year. My hope is that this'll be a way for me to process certain things in public for a number of reasons I'll write about one day—such as cultivating sincerity and vulnerability as paths through the noise.

Learn more at NowNowNow. Many thanks to Derek Sivers for the idea.