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I’m a professor, which I suppose makes me a professional teacher. I instead like to think of myself as a professional learner. I believe that teaching is an extension of learning. It enhances learning. If I can teach you how to do something, it means I have learned it myself. There are other ways to prove this to myself; if someone is paying me to do something, there’s a pretty good chance I know how to do it. But if I can observe you doing it, as a consequence of my having taught it to you, that’s exponentially better proof that I’ve learned it.

Looking out my window at the leaves
that finally came in the last few weeks,
and having played this video game Fortnight
where you build shieldish fortresses,
I can see that my tree building a shield
so it can incubate things along its thick brown branches
behind the green ruse we use, we and our crafty cousins,
to ward off the sun who loves the green
and forgets about us, and forgives the trees

I often think of Picasso’s famous quote, “Art is the sum of my destructions”. I’ve always gotten that. Whenever I make art, I feel like the second I’m close to that perfect line, shade, shape or texture, there’s all this pressure that I’m gonna fuck up.

When that happens, I imagine a little Picasso sitting on my shoulder, going “So why not fuck up royally?” And I give in. It’s easy, freeing, and I embrace the fuckup. I slash the pen, gouge the surface, rip it all up.

It never quite works, though. More often than not, I end up with a pile of mess. I chastise myself for wasting my time, paint, paper, canvas. I feel like a failure in little Picasso’s eyes. “You didn’t fuck up hard enough” I can hear him saying.

The little voice is easy to dismiss. Of course I can make something nice. Not destroy it. Nurture it, coax it along in its lousy, spineless, eager-to-please formulaic predictability. Eventually I’ll end up with something having at least a few people gazing, stoking my ego-fires.

But the best stuff I’ve always made happens when I give in. The only way to find that thing, the thing I want to leave behind, is to fuck up. Intentionally. Destroy that clean line, that perfect texture, that awesome font. Force myself to do it again, but better this time. And being aware of my doing it.

I recently read an article about someone who experienced trauma when they were very young, and how it manifested itself for the rest of his life as “the darkness”, a kind of demonic presence that was always looming.

It was a very sad read. Though a very busy person, he found no joy in work, relationships, exercise or hobbies. Eventually, he took his life.

I learned about Bills’ wide receiver Zay Jones’ incident last night, and began to think about it in that the context of “the darkness”. I wonder if he, too, has some kind of burden he carries, tied to experiences he cannot forget or wishes never happened.

I’m also torn up about all the stories coming forth regarding victims of abuse at the hands of those who should be their nurturers. The darkness that follows them must be excruciating. It’s encouraging to see them bringing their stories to the light.

If I had to define depression, it would be this darkness thing that follows you around and can’t be shaken off. I think we all experience it from time to time—something just beyond the horizon, or inching closer behind us in the rearview mirror. Most of us have learned to block it out, or ignore it. At our best, we learn to confront and defeat it. Life is tough, but we persevere.

We label people who are forced to cope with horrifying experiences, and who lack the facility to overcome the darkness, as depressed, mentally ill, unstable. First and foremost, however, they’re survivors, fighters, soldiers, heroes. They are us. We must replace words that marginalize and pigeon-hole with ones that humanize and empower. The darkness doesn’t stand a chance against community.

Apple and Microsoft make some of the most popular OS’s in the world: iOS, macOS, and Windows.

As software goes, that’s about it. Everything else they force down the users’ throats is pure garbage. I’m talking about iTunes, Mail, MS Office, Photo software, and the list goes on.

I honestly don’t know why this is. Google Docs is so superior to Office in every possible way. Gmail absolutely blows Apple’s Mail off the planet. iTunes is so confused about what its purpose is, so filled with layers of disconnected functionality, but it’s stuck on us users because that’s just how it is. I don’t know.

I do know that on my Macbook, Mail and iTunes and Photos are always opening unexpectedly, for a variety of reasons, none of which make much sense. It’s a shame that I can’t just make them go away completely.

I know very little, way less than I should, about the new variable typography stuff that’s been gaining traction and was discussed in css-tricks’ most recent shop talk episode. 

However, I’m having serious skepticism about how they can replace entire font families. There’s a lot of the discerning human eye in creating various weights (and especially italic versions) of fonts. I just can’t picture how some math algorithm can make that go away.