This whale is not digital.

Move the Nose.

The beauty of drawing with charcoals is the medium’s built in functionality that allows you to move components around your page without erasing entirely or starting over. So what if you’ve drawn a big dark eye with heavy charcoal and now you see it’s in the wrong place? No problem. Take your lighter sticks, put the new shapes in place, embed your new dark shapes, erase for your new light shapes. Oh, now the nose doesn’t work? Well, move the nose.

I have a drawing instructor who said this while demoing techniques for us: “See that nose? That nose is wrong. I’m going to move the nose. That’s it. Move the nose!”

And isn’t that the beauty of coding, too? When I first got into writing code, I had a misplaced belief that there was a precision in thinking one had to have from the start that gave birth to fully formed programs of striking elegance and simplicity. I was wrong. When confronted, now, with a bug from a misfiring method or a forgotten type cast, I find myself saying “Damnit, move the nose!” before confronting the errant process, placing my new darks, erasing my new lights, and moving the damn nose.

“Ebullient” would have to wait another day. 

Today’s word was “schadenfreude”.

Life.

Life.

The following sentiment has been expressed countless times throughout the course of humanity’s existence on this planet. It’s been said more eloquently, more petically, more tersely, more accurately, and by more important people. But here’s my crack at it:

Life is short. And it owes you nothing.

 Jonathan, younger brother of a close friend in my past, was hit by a car while riding his bike in New York City. Jonathan is literally a genius. Literally. If the practice of eugenics ever won the day, Jonathan would be picked for the final elite batch of people to carry forward the best of the human race. Today, however, he is in a hospital in New York with a filter in his heart to help prevent an embolism.

Life owes you nothing. And it is unsentimental.

It’s easy to be scared to live. And it’s easy to close your eyes and let life slide quietly past you. But inevitably you’ll wake up and realize you missed it all. You’ve got nothing to show for it. Then you have a whatever-life crisis, buy a motorcycle, cheat on your spouse, and wind up right back where you were.

Or, you can do. You can stop being afraid of life – life, with it’s cold and impartial view of you and everyone you know and love; life, with it’s precise yet mystifying ability to remove, add, cause pain, or prop up – and you can move forward.

Do something every day that will make you proud. Love someone. Make something. Conquer something (or at least start the process). Travel somewhere. Help someone. Whatever it is, do it.

Life is short. It doesn’t care. It owes you nothing and it will inevitably hurt you. But that’s okay. Hurt is a sign you loved. Hurt is a sign you lived. Hurt is simply the currency that lets you keep track of the good you found in life.

Good luck, Jonathan. My heart and thoughts are with you.

Marriage.

You know that feeling when you start to get sick? You feel equally warm and cold at the same time. Your body begins to hurt. You feel a soreness in your joints that isn’t “painful” per-se, but lets you know your immune system is in a knife fight with an unwanted bacterial visitor.

Imagine that feeling.

Now imagine that moment where you run home, throw on your pajamas and a massive hooded sweatshirt, drink some orange juice, and crawl- literally, crawl- under your bed covers.

Can you feel that delicious sensation of your body sinking into the bed as your eyes glaze and a compassionate warmth runs over you? In that moment the world is perfect.

Every day I am married to my wife feels just like that moment.