a year of blog, a year of dog

Today is Sawra's first birthday.

It's also been exactly one year since I started this blog. Both experiences have brought me a long way, and have taught me things that I didn't know I needed to learn. For the 2,000-odd visits, emails, comments, and most importantly, conversations, surrounding this blog, I owe immeasurable gratitude to all of you.

Thank you.

And as for puppy, it's hard to describe in words the laughs, the joys, the exasperation, the frustration, and the love of raising your first puppy... so I'll do it in pictures instead :).

Meeting puppy for the first time. Three months old on Memorial Day weekend.

Things Sawra likes: style.

Things Sawra does not like: sunglasses.

Things Sawra likes: displacing me from my bed.

Things Sawra does not like: being displaced from my bed.

Things Sawra likes: clothes (albeit not for the same reasons that I do).

Things Sawra does not like: shoes (or rather, booties, in this case).

Things Sawra likes: Halloween.

Things Sawra does not like: Halloween costumes.

Things Sawra likes: chewing.

... and chewing...

... and chewing.

Things Sawra likes: Aunt Andrea (but then again, who doesn't?).

Things Sawra does not like: cold weather.

If you'd like to use any of these pictures, feel free, with credit.

Sawra is the Aramaic word for "hope." Here's to puppy and the hope of things yet to come.

Happy birthday, puppy!

buying stuff with the irrational brain

I just bought a new laptop. This is no small feat, because I've been thinking about the purchase for at least a year now (I bought a new desktop in June instead). There's been a lot of internal (and external) debate about features and benefits and functionality. About Arrandale processors and how many gigs of RAM one needs. About portability.

Sawra approves of the new laptop (feel free to use with credit)

I just finished reading Jonah Lehrer's second book, How We Decide. In it, Lehrer makes an interesting point about purchasing decisions - that when we try and give our prefrontal cortices - our rational centers - too many variables to consider, our brains get overwhelmed and they give up. Our emotional brains have strong reactions to things, and when we're asked to make complicated decisions (like, buying laptops), we really should listen to what our amygdalas are telling us.

Tim Brown once said, "As a designer I ply my craft in the turbulent waters between the complex things we create and the human beings they are intended to serve." Our rational brains are really good at analyzing the complexity of objects that we have, but they are poor predictors of how usable they're going to be in our lives. That's a good challenge for designers to keep in mind - to help people bridge the gap between functionality and usability. Function is rational. Usability is emotional.

A month ago, during Snowpocalypse-turned-Icepocalypse in Atlanta, I impulse-bought the laptop that I should have bought nine months ago. In the month that I've had it, it's barely left my side - from Breckenridge to El Paso to Baltimore and back.

And you know what? It's the best laptop I've ever owned.

a few things to be thankful for

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and as I was walking into Octane, I came across this very fitting chalk painting on Howell Mill.

@ Howell Mill & Brady Ave (feel free to use, with credit)

I'm thankful for pink heels and the Atlanta skyline.

I'm thankful, of course, for my family. For my friends. For growing up in a world that never told me that I wasn't capable of being what I wanted to be. For the opportunity to create opportunities for other people.

I'm thankful for the country I come from and the country I call home.

I'm thankful for my health.

Sawra, ready for gameday, and thankful to be a Tech fan (feel free to use, with credit)

And, although it's been hard this season, I'm thankful for football. Clean, old-fashioned hate kicks off tomorrow at 7:45 PM.

Hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving, and go Jackets!

a fun post, a serious note, and pictures of the dog

Despite my best efforts and a flu shot, I'm sick. For the past two days I've been running a fever of about 101 degrees, and laying in bed with just the dog and a bottle of Amantadine to keep me company.

It's only tangentially related to talk about trauma centers, as I'm not actually in a trauma situation. The flu in a relatively normal, healthy adult shouldn't be much cause for concern. The upside of being sick is that I've had some time to go through emails that gmail has designated as "Everything Else" in my Priority Inbox (is anyone else using this? To any degree of success?). Last week, our VP of R&D's wife sent me an email from her daughter, an RN in Georgia, about trauma centers and funding. There's an amendment on the ballot for a November 2nd election for increasing the car tag fee by $10 to fund trauma centers in Georgia. For those of you in Georgia, spread the word, and make sure you make it to the polls on November 2nd.

In a former life, I did three months of eye-opening research in the trauma center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Grady is something of a joke between most well-to-do Atlanta families (and I use that term very, very loosely) - the ones that live north of I-20. Even the residents at Grady would tell us, if you've had a serious accident come to Grady, and then get out as fast as you can. Due to the large contingent of repeat homeless patients, the trauma team would call the ER "Hotel Grady" - drug addicts, chronically afflicted homeless, and alcoholics would deliberately self-injure to be allowed back into Grady for a warm bed and a meal to eat. The trauma center was constantly put on diversion due to overcrowded wards, and then would still have to accept patients because other trauma centers were on diversion too.

Needless to say, I'm all for the amendment. Check out the details here.

Now for the fun part of the post. I've been laying in bed, reading interesting blog posts, listening to Josh Ritter, and taking poor-quality iPhone photos of the dog. Some particularly memorable shots (if you want to use these pictures, please drop me a line!):

What Sawra thinks about me being sick.

Toy-hoarding. No, you can NOT play with my toys.

Getting a little camera shy. It's so funny to watch her rub her eyes.

Content that she gets to sleep on the bed all day.

Sawra is a 7-and-a-half-month-old Yorkie/Maltese mix, and the cutest thing ever.

what i don't understand about "busy" people

Sawra values sleeping, eating, and chewing on everything in sight. And it shows. (please do not reproduce without permission)

Everyone has 24 hours in a day. No more. No less. Everyone, or at least, the fully functional adults among us, has a choice of what they get to do with their 24 hours. Some value sleep. Some value work. Some value family, or friends, or athletics. We choose what those values are, and we choose how we manifest them. Which is why it amazes me that people still use the excuse "I'm too busy!" (read the part about being addicted to "busy")

No, you're not too busy. You just don't value what I'm asking you more than you value what else you're doing. And that's fine. They're your values, not mine. Trust me; I get it. I've been "busy." I've had (and still sometimes do have) 18- and 19- hour days, back to back (to back). I've been through engineering school and a political campaign (at the same time). But in each of those situations, I still had the choice of designing my life to fit those things that I valued.

Case in point: the traditional workplace is designed by people who value early mornings (and apparently going to bed at 9 PM). Unfortunately, I value late evenings with family and friends, and I value sleep. I value waking up and going for a run. I value having 30 minutes, before I do anything else - before I shower, before I take the dog out, before I check my email - to have time to write and sketch and ideate. And I value doing all of those things before I leave for work at 7:45 AM. So I design my mornings to accommodate for them. But I also value my work, and sometimes, these other things that I value get sacrificed to maintain the trust of my team and the integrity of my work.

The point is, what we value comes out in our actions. We are no busier than anyone else, our actions no harder, our lives no more challenging. We value what we value, and we put those things first, and we can't force those thoughts or priorities on anyone else. I think Stephen Covey says it best:

"... You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage - pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically - to say 'no' to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good'.

So it's worth asking yourself if you really live in a way that promotes those values. If you value your family, do you regularly make time for them each day or week? If you value your relationship with God (Shivji, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, nonbelief, etc.), do you actively pray and make time for reflection? If you value your health, do you exercise routinely?

Or, are you too "busy"?