I started this Substack to improve my writing and to clarify my thoughts. Work and life can often get in the way of doing things you want, like publishing. This year, I have felt grateful for the work I put into my career but still learning to slow down.
When I relax, I like to work on personal projects, often in bed before I go to sleep. One of my recent activities was drawing icons at night, and another ongoing passion is drawing typefaces for the last 20 years. I still love what I do.
Lately, I’ve been contemplating how everything we put care into meaning is work/value. The icons I drew for fun ended up finding a home in several projects. The typeface I've been drawing every day for over a year is already in use on multiple projects with more prospects. These passion projects fit perfectly into future work, almost too perfectly.
This has deepened my understanding of how interconnected our efforts and outcomes are. Every small task, hobby, and personal project is a seed planted for the future. Some end up having more yield than others, but what we do for enjoyment has significant, unexpected impacts on our lives. Hopefully the webbed lines between work and play blur, merging into a cohesive path forward.
The closer we align with what we want to do, and actively pursue it, the more it fits into the future. Work takes time to grow sometimes. We need to see it first, do the work, and be in an ecosystem where ideas can connect externally with the world, and eventually, things fall into place.
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“Any care given to meaning is work/value” came from a workshop with Nitzan
Herb Sundays is back in season. A music-adjacent project I work on with/for Sam Valenti IV
Public Type got a visual refresh
Black Beach Coffee is here
Matthew Shlian’s birthday is today, what a fantastic human