With unexpected downtime between projects in June, Joey asked me to “maybe help out” with Steven’s idea for a new Sylvain Labs thought-leadership experiment (if you read nothing further, it’s now live). The plan was to help come up with a series of white-papers that don’t just regurgitate business platitudes, but actually conjure up ideas and tools to start changing things up at work. Cheekily, they called these “Off-White Papers”.

Days turned into weeks and me “maybe helping out” turned into me assisting with first paper drafts, dreaming up some of those tools, shifting from writer-mode to producer-mode, outlining all the content we’d need for a website and a newsletter, and then building out that website wireframe on Shopify (woof), and designing every campaign template, form, and page we’d need in MailChimp for a companion newsletter (S/O to my SO for several a coding assist).

From strategy, to writing, to design, to production: I can proudly say I more than “maybe helped out” with a little bit of everything. It all became this deeply magical moonlit mess of Joey, Steven, Trevor, Katie, myself, David, Les, and a few more folks all in a collaboration of love. And as always, thankful I’ve been able to trick Joey into consistently inviting me along for the ride on all his crazy ideas. (Shhh. Don’t tell him, though.)

Check out:

• The website

• The inaugural Off-White Paper, and

• The newsletter

I usually post about things made 100% by me but re: collaboration-of-love, credit here is 1000% shared. Still, see here a little sneak peek of what I helped build.

Scripts and topics and slides and special-guest hunting and suggestion hat signage and crib sheet cards and secret envelopes stuffed with glow sticks and hot take workshops and wax-sealed special thank you gifts and invitations (see cloudful collab below w/ NoraM) and RSVP sheets and ukulele practice and so much more that was the madness of preparing for the Critical Nonsense live show was totally worth it. Feeling gratitude for Sylvain Labs and all the people who pitched in to turn our silly weekly diversion into an event last night. See the video here.

As Let’s Save the Date approaches its second birthday, I FINALLY figured out the proper code to lock the typewriter effect on the landing page!! James would be proud. Of course, only a week later, they retired the domain.

Still, I realized I never shared this work. Background: I and fellow Sylvain Labs intern, Eliza, devoted our summers to researching the engagement process, out of which I built a micro-site (http://letssavethedate.com), hand-drew the illustrations, and hand-wrote the workbook. It’s a satire of the overabundant “wedding planning survival checklist:” instead, an emotional survival guide—something Brides, Martha, and other ‘Big Wedding’ oracles don’t provide (despite painfully obvious need). Since participating in a few weddings and witnessing the stressors firsthand, I’m proud to say the guide still holds up. Kicking myself about the missed opportunity to refer to the stressors as “uninvited wedding guests.” Good thing I’m truly the only one who would care about this anyway.

[Obsessed] guest editor as The Link approaches its 4th birthday.

You’ve got a slipping grip on fast forward

Toward an ending you wrote

Where good defeats evil

And you called yourself the villain

Working on some new songs. 

My first guest edition of The Link! I succeeded in including the actual wordmark I designed in the header, but failed at coding edge to edge color in the preheader. Can't believe Ben's almost at 100 weeks! These are my original design proofs from back in 2015 (nearly two years ago).

When you wish upon a star,
I wanna tell you--
Tell you that I just can't speak.

I would sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of having you near
When picking apples in late September,
Like we've done for years.

1, 2, 3, you're falling in love with me,
I'm falling into your life faster than
1, 2, 3, I love you, yes it's true,
You stole my heart and
I was enchanted to meet you.

Whenever I see your smiling face,
I have to smile myself
You've got me going crazy,
Knocked me off my feet
I was enchanted to meet you, too.

But,
I'll tell you one thing:
It's always better when we're together
And nothing can keep me from loving you
And you know it's true
So just let go
And fall
Into
It

I'm thirteen, but when I was nine, Mom said that we weren't allowed to drink milk anymore. She told us, "it's bad for you." And that was kind of it.

Except, I like milk. And so does Dad. And my little sister. And my friends. Actually, a lot of people I know at school drink it and stuff.

When I asked Mom what's bad for you about it, she said, "it gets you sick.”

Actually, it's kind of weird: even though we're not supposed to have it in the house, there's still a carton in the downstairs fridge for Dad. Mom definitely knows it's there. Sometimes they fight about it. And when Mom's not around, Dad puts some over his cereal and even lets us have some on ours too, like it's some special treat. Plus, if I'm at a friend's house, I usually have to explain everything. I'm never really sure if it's okay to have any or not, or if somebody will tell on me if I have some. But none of us have ever gotten sick from it. It's really confusing.

It's just, I know that if Mom sees us having any at all that we'll get in trouble. Each time we get caught or she thinks something is up, she gets really really upset about it. She doesn't get why we drink it sometimes after she tells us not to. So pretty much I try not to have milk unless I know for sure she won't see. She just gets so sad. And also usually ends up blaming Dad. And I wonder...

This morning, I was with my babysitter and she made me some chocolate milk. But Mom came home early and I pretty much had to throw my glass into the sink so she wouldn't see.

Because, on one hand, Mom said no.
But on the other hand, it's just milk, right?

This is not like a Hunger Games’ kind of dystopia where anachronisms crop up in a futuristic America. Fat is set today. The only difference is that America believes that it’s better to be thick than thin.

All guys want fatter girls.
All girls want to be fatter.
And all people have it ingrained in their skulls that fat is best.

Skinny girls stand in mirrors and curve their backs to puff out their tummies. They go to Shake Shack every day for a double and fries, fighting their whip-fast metabolisms. They wear clothes two sizes too small, and they cake on shimmering face powder to round out every edge they can see.

They are skinny girls like Amalie.

Fat is the story about beauty in all of its shapes and forms.
And I haven’t written it yet.

Her dress was a sight to be seen,
pressed in blue, pink, yellow and green.
And with perfume and pearls
and such colourful swirls,
she felt like a tropical queen.

But,
when you’re a young girl, you don’t know
that a dress can tell all whom you show
you’re entitled and bratty
and a favorite of Daddy
with a backyard where money trees grow.

“Lilly Pulitzer represents something that money cannot buy.”
- Robin Givhan

Inspired by this Atlantic article and a youth showered with Lillies.

Grandma is withering away, and she knows it. She cringes climbing out of bed each morning; when she can’t stand sitting, but standing is worse. She counts down the clock to the end of each day. She picks up the phone to distract herself from the drone of the ticking. Four funerals this year? The contact book is slimmer. She calls the only bra that fits her “Party Bra” to prop a smile onto her gaunt face, her body weeping from its bones.

It’s no surprise that Grandma doesn’t want to spend her time “being painful”. That among the entree of pills for breakfast, she wouldn’t mind throwing an anti-depressant into the mix. It’s just another pill.

But she is still Grandma. A woman satisfied with the simplicity of the status quo and the comfort of normalcy. It’s this aging that takes away what she knows as her most meager essentials. That is what is killing her. Her body demands a new normal. That she summed up so succinctly: “the most I can do is protect my world as best I can.” Because right now,

Grandma’s world is falling apart.

“Just don’t give up on me.”

“I won’t.”

You’re on a circle.

On it is written in thick, bold type,

Here is Superlative.

It’s blue, simple, surrounded by a limitless white canvas expanse.

You’re on this circle.

And you realize what it represents is happiness, joy and love.

And you also realize that it is not a circle at all.

It’s a pie. A wedge.

Not the pie that tugs at your heart and tastebuds with memories of apples, nutmeg and honey.

A blue, simple, tasteless, textureless wedge ticking. A clock. A chart. Shrinking.

And in this moment you are torn.

You are on the circle. You’re experiencing, witnessing, understanding the superlatives.

And yet the first thing on your mind is that it’s a wedge, not a circle. And it’s shrinking.

It’s shrinking and you know that if you spent your time concerned that it’s shrinking that will be all that’s been complete once the pie has run out.

It’s shrinking and you can’t help it.

It’s shrinking.

It’s

the superlative really that tickles you between your toes.

That you read the thick, bold lettering and believed in the superlatives. That’s what started it all.

To think that if you hadn’t read it and you simply were contented with occupying a shrinking circle pie wedge that you wouldn’t be concerned at all about the shrinking or the pie or the inevitable end but that it and you could

just

be.

I know it’s been too long.

But this isn’t named ‘In The Interim’ for nothing. I haven’t had a moment.

Tonight I’m making an exception to write. Just a little.

             I D O L S

There’s a beat. Twice. Thrice.

You know that chocolate syrup that hardens over icecream? A car crash?

Crack.

If I could draw a picture, I’d show you how I feel it at the bullseye of the target. An apple.

You know that the word ‘stunning’ is so true? Even faceless, voiceless, I find myself stunned. A human is never perfect they say. But what when their imperfection is perfection? Thud. A heartache and a serenade.

I’m dizzy. It drowns my head and fills the crevices and I feel it still.

I feel. Yet, I’m grounded and I know it’s not perfect. He’s not perfect. He’s human. He’s me, and he’s real, no dream.

Then I find myself dreaming.

I take a spoonful and wish the melting stops. Remember how that was yesterday.

It rings. My ears and the chimney weeps.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll be Cinderella.