Uptime report

It’s midnight and I’m up thinking about best-of-year lists and trend forecasts and whether it’s more productive for us to grade a year by the quality of its events (“what do you mean no beloved musician died?”), or to just come out and grade freelance bloggers and thought leaders on their ability to wring meaning and get hits out of random, time-bound raw material. Well, really I’m awake here waiting for my wife to get home because the end of the year is also a time for working too hard to meet deadlines*.

* In some geographies and industries.

2019 has been pretty dismal for side projects, finding new obsessions, practicing photography, and writing anything for the hell of it, although the fact that I’m on here again might be an indicator of improvement. I’ve also just tonight confirmed an order with a printing company to put some awful! simplistic! doodles of mine on physical items that I might give away or try to break even on at a flea market someday — I guess that counts as making something?

At the day job, in terms of seeing similar organizational challenges play out in totally different industries, it’s been a jackpot. I definitely get to work on more interesting problems these days, and I am reminded that this is what was on the other side of the glass when my view was confined to advertising years ago. My parents still think I work in advertising, I think. The problems are interesting but in that “may you live in interesting times” kind of way. While the solutions can be estimated in board rotations, expectations of change are (understandably) timed in internships.

A recurring theme this and every year is dealing with a sort of design debt: either paying or preventing the high price of not properly addressing flaws or missing data the first time around, deferring the clean-up or more thoughtful work to some future version of yourself or your team, without realizing how the laws of compounding interest also apply to… well, everything. In the rush to launch X by the close of Y, you’re really just writing some consultancy a fat check to be cashed five years later, one the finance guys don’t see coming.

I guess what’s different now is the focus is usually on a part of the problem, but increasingly there are opportunities to get at the root. More work to be done in this space next year, infinitely more to learn and improve on, can’t hug every cat, etc.

On my metaphorical iPod

Janelle Monáe’s new song, That’s Enough, from the Lady and the Tramp live-action remake’s soundtrack of all things, is giving me the chills. She’s saying things with the quality of her voice I didn’t know she could.

If you watched Netflix’s surprisingly good and very Appley/Beatsy reality tv rap contest Rhythm and Flow (such a missed opportunity for the Beats brand and for Apple it might have been an acceptable apology for Carpool Karaoke), you will most certainly remember Old Man Saxon, an impressive performer whose creativity and talent go far beyond the gimmick of his dapper appearance.

Well he’s got a new mini album out today, The Peacock Honey. I recommend it along with his last EP, Goldman Sax (at first listen, I think that was better produced). I hope he blows up next year. I’ll link a music video from the last release that really impressed me below.

While we’re on the topic of music, I started a tradition at work back in December of 2017 where we would compile a playlist of our favorite songs each year and send them out as a sort of Christmas card to all the other global offices. We’d also make an email card, a microsite, and other fun stuff like a Christmas chatbot (ironically!) or sketches of each other to go with it. But the music was always the point.

This year, we’re going to try broadening that out exponentially to include Best Of picks for film, games, books… it’s in progress and I don’t know how well it’s going to work out. But it’s more exciting than just doing the same thing again for the sake of tradition, which is what I was afraid we would end up doing this time around. I’ll link it when we do it, if I can.

Janelle Monáe’s new song:

https://music.apple.com/sg/album/thats-enough-from-lady-and-the-tramp/1489003167?i=1489003168

Old Man Saxon:

https://music.apple.com/sg/album/the-peacock-honey/1488526372