Working From Home

Written on May 3rd 2012 / Permalink

Every morning I help my wife get our kids into the car for day care. Sometimes it's punctuated by tears or jokes or hugs. But mostly it's just routine — And I hate it.

When someone asks me what I do for a living, I often get asked if working from home is distracting. I explain that I love what I do and it’s not hard to stay relatively focused. This explanation is the “shiny-make-me-look-good” version. There is more to the story.

I’d say the real driving motivation for staying on task is that moment every morning when we strap our two little boys into their car seats and say good bye. The oldest knows that it’s possible to stay home and jump on me and watch Samurai Jack and eat cheddar goldfish all day. He tells me he wants to stay home and that he has work to do, too. Have you ever played the “Game of Life” with a three year old? It’s: let’s drive where we want and skip retirement and get into a car accident so your little blue and pink people fly out. It sounds hipster but it’s really pure and fun. It’s meaningful. All of this pulls on me.

So - I’m being honest today. I’m working because I need this to be a really productive day to offset what I’m missing with my boys. This is my everyday reality and I mean not to waste it on things that don’t matter. They deserve better.

Love you guys.

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Random Thoughts

Written on February 14th 2012 / Permalink

It's been a while. Rather than come up with elaborate excuses (like a new baby or a new house or client work - or all three working together in some sort of time-sucking-tandem-vacuum-of-death) I'll just reel off some things that have been on my mind...

Thank You, Steve Jobs

At some point after Jobs death, I bought the Walter Isaacson biography. I decided to read the entire thing on my iPhone in a sort of self-induced mourning ritual. One of the takeaways was that Steve decided to be not so picky about his daily clothing choices. The standard black mock-turtle neck, old jeans, and New Balance sneakers pretty much took up his whole closet. He just couldn’t be bothered. By making this small choice way ahead of time, it freed him up for the big ones the rest of the day. Something clicked for me when I read that.

We moved in September to a sleepy little farm town in Upstate New York, where my Grandfather once worked at the Agway. All of the old guys I meet tell me he was a “son-of-a-gun.” (I think that makes me a son-of-a-daughter-of-a-son-of-a-gun or something.) Anyways, it seems like folks around here care little of how one clothes themselves. There is more of premium put on how one acts or keeps his shrubbery or how often you mow your lawn. I like it. So between Steve, my Grandfather’s old friends, and my natural proclivity to look somewhat grizzly - I’ve decided to just work hard at working hard. I’m going to make the 1st big decision of the day behind my desk (and look like a deranged hill-billy doing it).

My New Office Studio

When we were house-hunting we had to make an office or studio apart of what we were looking for. Working from home requires it. The house we settled on is perfect for us and we couldn’t be happier. My office was what the previous owners had used as a den. It has a wood stove and deer heads and walls of wood (not paneling, like real wood). Sadly, they took the deer heads. I wondered how to make it “me” without losing it’s cabin in the woods vibe.

Love my jack-a-lope. Need to name him.

So far, so good. I’ve embraced my inner woodsman-retro-shiek. I had an opportunity to trade art with Bronwyn Lewis, and rightly requested an orange Jack-a-lope head. An old print of a fishing pole (my Grandfathers), these really cool floating “made-of-books” shelves, and an old movie marquee “O” got me started. I have big plans yet and will share once the space is complete.

Toilet Time

I have been tempted to do some real research into the effects of the iPad and iPhone on how long people spend in the bathroom. Anecdotal evidence points to somewhere in the range of +200%.

Info-graphics

I have been tempted to make said iOS toilet research into a beautiful info-graphic, but don’t have the time. The passion is there folks, just not the hours.

Hazel and Dropbox

iOS 5 gave us iCloud and the world rejoiced. I really love it. Gone are the days of plugging my iPhone or iPad into the computer. This is a good thing; Except that that means I never take the beautiful (and sometimes hilarious) videos of my boys off of my phone.

I just recently got into using Hazel and it’s really an amazing app. You can apply some rules to a folder and Hazel watches the folder and then acts on it accordingly. So long story short, I have a Dropbox folder that I upload videos shot with my iPhone to via the Dropbox app. Hazel watches the folder and if it’s a movie, it adds the video to iTunes, and then deletes it. So, I can shoot, upload*, and then watch the video on my Apple TV** in just a few minutes.

*I really wish there wasn’t a Dropbox upload size restriction. It doesn’t work with all of the videos I shoot. Anything over a minute and a half gets rejected.

**Why not just use Airplay? I do that when I want to share a video or photo right away. Videos take up a lot of space on my phone and I prefer a way to archive them.

Paprika! Eureka!

I love the recipe manager app, Paprika from Hindsight Labs. There are three separate apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.  It syncs across platforms flawlessly and it’s really easy to add recipes. You can add them via the in-app browser or using a bookmarklet if you’re at your Mac.

One day I’m fiddling with Alfred and realize I can add a custom search to it for one of the recipe sites we love as a family. So, lets say I’m in the mood for Chimichangas (who isn’t?). I bring up Alfred using a simple keystroke, type “Rec Chimichangas” and my browser is filled with recipes. I find one I like that seems to reasonable match up with my cooking skills and click the bookmarklet. The whole deal is imported into Paprika, photo and all. At the store, I use the iPhone app to check off the ingredients and then make them when I get home. This is the future, kids.

Being a New Dad, Again

I can’t put into words the joy my boys bring to me. Our oldest is 2.5-ish and is into ninjas and robots. Our newest is four weeks old this week and is into crying and peeing on his parents. Of all the things I make and think about, they are at the top.

And rightly so.

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