Turned out that today was an unexpected free one, bar a couple of hours. Enjoyed the chance to work on an idea for a clients website that I didn’t think I’d get to work on for a while. Good to stretch the brain cells with some CSS3 that allows you to do things previously only reserved for JavaScript.

I’ve a photo I took a few years ago from my second trip to Israel that I really want printed and framed. I haven’t been able to find a place that prints large scale photos, anyone got any recommendations?

Always good to enjoy a catch up with old friends over a good burger and a glass of wine or two!

Fed up of opening Mail.app to my inbox where there might be emails despite there being none moments ago, I’ve decided to try an experiment. I just created a mailbox called Zero that when I’ve finished what I’m doing in the app I now click on. The idea is that when I open Mail I’m greeted by a blank screen so I can send an email without seeing my inbox until I’m ready to see it. We’ll see how it goes.

The curse of double jobbing. A 10 hour shift on my feet all day followed by some late tweaks to a design project after dinner.

Words are important. A single word can mean so much. It can have many meanings depending on context, how you read it, and what your understanding of the word is. More often than not we take a single meaning for a word and apply it broadly across every instance we come across, but sometimes it’s really important to actually look at and consider all the meanings behind a word. Apply all the meanings of a word to a sentence and it can bring a whole new depth of meaning and understanding. A whole new way of thinking about that sentence. Words are important.

Home try on from Glasses Direct arrived this morning. In need of some new sunglasses but the two for one offer is tempting me into replacing my everyday glasses as well.

An extra day of doing design work tomorrow which I hadn’t expected, unfortunately it means I’m working in The Pod on Saturday which is less than ideal.

I genuinely love CSS Grid. Never before has designing something visually interesting and easily responsive for smaller screens been so easy and fun.

I’ve seen several posts on Twitter today commenting that because the media is reporting about the new Royal Baby, we shouldn’t forget about Windrush and NHS funding. The implication that those items are far more important and shouldn’t be sidelined by something like a birth of a child is incredibly patronising to me. Whilst I would agree those things are important, why can’t people just take a moment and realise that the birth of a Royal Baby brings many people a little bit of joy in amongst the stress of life? The Royal Family is an important part of our British heritage, when events like new babies happen in that family it’s something which we can all share in the joy. Just as many people filled the streets for the last Royal Wedding because it brought them an excuse to celebrate and forget about the difficulties of life for a bit, so too does the arrival of a new Prince. There’s nothing wrong with the birth of a Royal Baby taking over the headlines for a day, it won’t do us any harm. Those other matters will still be around, and will still be in the news cycle tomorrow or for as long as they are deemed important enough to be. So let’s just relax a little, and share the joy of a family as they celebrate the safe arrival of a new little boy into the world.

Really enjoyed working a piece of print design this afternoon. I really enjoy designing and building websites, but there’s something about designing for print that the web doesn’t always meet. Print pieces give a feeling of working on something that’s more substantial and useful when compared to the rapidly changing world of the internet.

Always fun to try out a new beta for a Micro.blog app. This time Icro from @hartlco, impressed so far.

Also pleased to get the first instance of the new word mark for my name that I’ve been refining over the last month or two out into the wild.

Just to demonstrate my thinking behind getting a very unfinished new theme up on the blog, I’ve already revised and fixed several things. Now it’s a case of clarifying all the broken bits and features and slowly adding them.

The first part of that is a new theme for my blog, or at least the beginnings of one. I’ve been playing around with it for ages, but decided that if I don’t put it on the site I’ll just keep playing and never actually get it to a point I’m happy to use. There are still many things to fix and develop the design of, but I want to get away from a stock theme and use one that’s as personal to me as my blog is.

Another typical Forest performance. Defensively frail at set pieces and didn’t take the chances we created. Story of our season. Thankfully the celebrations weren’t too exuberant, helped by the distant action of an epic thunderstorm midway through the first half. #nffc

Getting ready to watch Nottingham Forest v Cardiff City with a Cardiff supporting friend. There might be need for a celebration agreement before kick off. #nffc

@colinwalker just exploring your method of adding the date to a tile of a status post, does the code in this post go in functions.php?

Enjoyed a little trip to Oxford to see Designing English at The Bodleian Library. Good to get out and about a bit on a Saturday, but now time for serious introverting.

I’ve been trying to establish some new habits lately so this was a timely post from CJ Chilvers. I’ve been using the app Streaks like he mentions to keep focused on some of my habits, but there is a certain lack of accountability that goes with it. When a big streak gets broken it’s very hard to find the energy to start again.

One thing I’ve found a bit easier to face when starting—or restarting—a project is to break it down to months. Define the goal, decide to begin it at the start of the next month, and then make sure you’re ready to go in the time in between. The space allows you to process what you’re aiming to accomplish, and allows you the time you need to make sure you’re ready to get going.

This week I can across the blog is Simon Thomas. He’s a Sky Sports presenter and a Christian, known by many in the U.K. He lost his wife to cancer in September last year and has been blogging about his grief. This week he shared a post about his Secret Battle with depression and anxiety.

It’s a very honest and open account of the battle he has, and still is, facing. I have a great admiration for anyone who is able to post so publicly about their battle with mental health. I have attempted to write many times about my own struggle with depression, it is not an easy thing to do. I’m thankful that Simon has a strong faith in God that is helping him through this time. My own faith helped me in my darkest time, and I have witnessed the faith of others close to me help them. I am forever thankful for this.

There’s an odd pressure when you’re trying to exercise the muscle of discipline, it’s tempting to want everything you do as a part of that to be the best that it can be. Sometimes you need to just push through and exercise that muscle. When you’re starting out, quantity is often more important than quality. You need to get used to doing something regularly before you can focus on doing it better, otherwise the fear of not good enough can hold you back and prevent you from making the progress you want to make.

I just added a new category in my YNAB Budget under Quality of Life Goals, it’s name? Books.

Since I started using Goodreads in 2013 I’ve read 104 books. That’s an average of just under 21 books a year with a low of 17 in 2013 and a high of 34 books in 2016.

Clearly I like to read, so it made sense to actually budget for these books financially since I’m already making time in my life to read them. There’s something very different about sitting down and relaxing with a good book compared to a film or boxset that I enjoy a great deal. Most of these books are fiction, I find they provide me with a good way of shutting my mind off at the end of the day by forcing me to use my imagination. I have to let my mind create the images that go with the words, converting the writers descriptions into visuals in my mind. The words on the page acting as the brush and my mind as the paint to create the large landscapes and cityscapes as well as the detail of the characters faces and the expressions they pull.

Until a few years ago I had gone a few years without reading a lot, I always had a novel on the go but the number I would read in a year was much less. Gradually as I got older and remembered how much I like reading the number would increase, but the intensity at which I devoured books became greater after I became ill with depression a few years ago. Throughout my recovery, and when I find my mood dipping again, novels become a great source of escape. Usually I find concentration hard when I’m battling a low period, but a good novel (often a familiar one that I’ve read many times) is able to provide me with some escape. Reading the prose of a good fantasy or sci-fi book allows me to find freedom from the circular thoughts and spirals of whatever I find myself fixating on. As a visual thinker letting my imagination build the worlds centuries away from today (in either direction) is a great way of exercising my creative muscles and preventing those unhelpful thought patterns take hold.

Whenever I’ve spoken to friends who have been struggling with similar mental health issues, I always recommend they read. It takes a bit of effort to start, but I’ve found it much more helpful than watching a film. The act of watching images develop on a screen is far less distracting than having to engage your mind with the words and story of a book. Reading, I find, is a form of active rest. I can let my body rest and recharge, while using my mind in a way that’s different from the work of my two jobs, and in so doing letting it refresh and recharge.

So here’s to books, to my new book budget, and to the many more hours of rest that they will provide.

I’ve been thinking a little more about the link I posted to Austin Kleon’s blog the other day. I finished it with the line

Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you.

It’s a sentiment that you hear quite regularly around the Internet these days. Just keep turning up every day and do the thing—whatever your thing is.

The phrase turning up is just a less intimidating way of saying be disciplined. Turning up to write a blog post everyday is a discipline, just as reading your bible every day is or getting up without pressing the snooze button.

As I get older I’m understanding more and more that learning to be disciplined is one of the most important things you can do. It can effect every area of your life and it’s easy to assume that discipline is something that you have or you don’t. That you’re either able to be disciplined or you’re not, but that’s not the case. Discipline, I’m learning, is something you can develop. It’s like a muscle, the more you work it the stronger it gets.

The hard part, I believe, is not getting started but maintaining and developing. Everyone can start something, doing it for a couple of days before they get distracted or it begins to feel like work, and then stopping because it requires effort to continue. But that’s where you need to begin exercising that muscle of discipline, when things feel too hard keep going regardless, over time how hard it feels will disappear and instead it will become something you do each and every day.

So join me in learning to be disciplined. Starting tomorrow morning decide what time you’re going to get up, set your alarm and then get up when it goes off. No snoozing, no rolling over, just turn off that alarm and get up. Then do it the next day, and the next, until it becomes something you just do.

Today when you say “nest egg” many think of money saved and put away, but a literal “nest egg” is a real or fake egg that you put in a nest to encourage a bird or a hen to lay more eggs there. So what Thoreau is saying is that by simply writing down a thought, you encourage more thoughts to come. When you have enough thoughts pushed together in the same space — a collage of thoughts, juxtaposed — they often lead to something totally new.

This is the magic of writing.

Austin Kleon wrapped up a recent post with the quote above. The post on one level is about journaling and writing in general, but do you know what else that quote describes? A blog.

A blog is nothing more than a series of thoughts written down over a period of time. When you think about it that way it’s incredibly freeing. There should be no pressure. Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you.