Thoughts & Deeds

It’s become a dirty world in the creative community. “Crowdsourcing” often means a business has chosen to ask all-comers to submit responses to the businesses request – be it a logo, web site design, or engineering design for NASA’s next space shuttle – with no guarantee of pay or selection of their submitted work. On one hand, it’s a great way to get the community involved in solving a problem rapidly. … more

I’ve never been a fan of parades. For one, I’m only 5′2″ and can never see the floats and marching groups from behind that Really Tall Guy Who Always Stands In Front Of Me. Plus I don’t care for large crowds. But every year I make an exception for the gay pride parade, because it’s different. We’re not celebrating civic pride, we’re celebrating being ok with ourselves in spite of everything we may experience. … more

Last Friday I had the excellent opportunity to talk to interactive industry colleagues about something near and dear to my liver heart – homebrewing. I served five kinds of homebrew to warm up the crowd, then dropped an amazing 17 minutes of blabbing about beer on their unwitting ears. People were kind enough to laugh at my dorky jokes, too! What nice folks we have in Portland. … more

I grew up on the Puget Sound, with sea water in view and the sound of gulls in my ears each day. Mine is a coastal folk, whether from Scotland or Ireland or Sweden, always near the water if not on it. The ocean delineates the boundaries of all I know, a comforting velvet rope marking the edges of my life and the adventures that will take place once I get from here to there.

I’ve never lived more than two hours from the Pacific Ocean. Not being near a body of water that large is like sleeping alone in a king size bed – when you’re in the middle of it you can’t stick your foot or arm out and know “ah yes, there’s the edge.” Out here in the Pacific Northwest, the ocean is my main geographical reference point. I know its shape as British Columbia becomes Washington becomes Oregon and moves on through California to become Mexico and South America. It tells me that our borders don’t matter, that the sea endures when these borders change and are washed away by the next tide.

Whether it’s on a sandy beach in Oceanside or the black pahoehoe of Hawai’i, facing the enormity of the ocean is sublime. No matter who or what we are in life, we all came from those briny depths. Oceans contain us and give us form, challenge us to cross them, soothe us to sleep, threaten to unmake us.

Without them, we are nothing.

This isn’t a snow town. We’re more a rainy and cold sort of folk, and when the “white stuff” hits PDX we all panic a bit. Now, I’m a native lowlands northwester and never learned to drive in the snow, so I’m not sure what excuse all you transplants from the midwest and east coast have. But it’s true, in Portland all it takes is an inch of snow and you’ll be snowed in. … more

Mine is a pretty cynical generation. Most of us in our 30s have spent the majority of our lives in a recession, in a war over oil, facing climate change, and enduring political parties that fail to inspire much less to lead us to a better tomorrow. We’ve lacked hope that things will get better, that people are good and decent, and that we can somehow change our situation. … more

One of the wonderful things about running a creative agency is that on the rare 70 degree mid-October day you can play hookey and enjoy the sun. You can’t take a gift like this and stay inside in the Pacific Northwest. No! It’s an imperative to get outside, recharge, enjoy the weather and get some vitamin D. … more

Maybe it’s that I’ve played team sports since I was 5, but I love me a team. Not watching teams, but being part of one. I love the cameraderie, the friendly competition, the way the whole transcends the sum of its parts to become something new, better, more awesome. Nothing brings this home for me like going to the Gay Softball World Series with my amazing Cleats O’ Fire.

We’re not the best team in the world. This year we’re 5th in the nation in the D division, which is the lowest division for women’s teams. We’re kind of like the Bad News Bears at times, throwing wildly and popping the ball up so high that it might hit a plane. Then again, there are the grand slams, the double-plays, the amazing catches, and Wheels O’ Fire around the bases.

Our rules are simple:

1. Have fun.
2. Be safe.
3. Throw to people.

Softball isn’t an individual sport; grand slams can’t happen if the bases aren’t loaded, double-plays require 2-3 people (most of the time), and some of us need the extra help of base coaches and on-deck batters to remind us when to run from third base to home (not that this happened to me, of course). We need each other. We’re better together. In fact, we’re at our best together.

No home run hitter in the world can pull together a crappy team and turn them into winners. A single ringer doesn’t win games. An individual can excel by themselves, or they can help to lift the whole team up. We have some pretty impressive players on the team, but each year we all get a little bit better, become more confident, and play smarter because we all work together regardless of skill or experience.

So, a week with the Cleats reminds me of the transcendent power of being part of a team, taking care of each other, having fun together, and running your butt off when it’s called for. Whether it’s playtime in the pool, board games in the hotel lobby, carpooling to games, or being on the field with our cleats in the grass and sun in our eyes, we’re a team through and through. That’s what I want to bring to my work, my friendships, my marriage, and my life.

Keep up the good work, my Cleats!

* Team pictured above in the photo that won us $500 in sponsorship money from Subaru. Oh yes, we’ve got stuff!

Just as I was about ready to post my long-overdue August monthly mux, I found out that the RIAA had shut down Muxtape. Whaaaa? Yeah, I heard the needle scratch on the record as the tunes came to a halt, too. And then disappointment in the RIAA set in. Is their goal to stop people from discovering and buying new music? … more

Remember in high school when you had to read Homer’s Odyssey? Your teacher probably bored you with discussions of archetypes, heroes, and a whole lot of crazy Greek gods, goddesses, and weird offspring and creatures like Charybdis. Maybe if you had a really cool teacher and you got to watch Star Wars as a treat, only to be tricked into discussing how it’s just like the Odyssey with all those archetypes and heroes and plot arcs and weird creatures like Jawas. … more