Peeping My Journal

This week, I’ve had a peculiar struggle with social media and as a result screentime. An overwhelming majority of what’s put out on social media seems insightful at first glance, but deep down it’s a downward spiral of anxiety for me. Once I pop up instagram or twitter, the scrolling never stops. Typical of me, I tried ‘being in control’. I turned all my social media notifications off and a 15 min timer on each of them, that way I won’t have to glare at my phone for every like, comment or DM. Strangely enough, it’s somehow counter intuitive. When notifications are off, I could be doing some work and wonder, “Maybe ‘Allan’ replied to my DM.” And so it’s back to the same old struggle. So I earlier this week resorted to deleting Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (the biggest culprits) from my phone, initially with an aim to spend less time on there. If it’s absolutely needed then I would have to use a medium unoptimised for scrolling—my desktop.

The first day without those apps felt like there was this hole in my phone. Almost like my phone lacked some critical part. Day 1: super hard, Day 2: is this possible, Day 3: Look, I’m living without social media!

While I understand that there are many avenues for good on social media, an overdose is incredibly hard to reverse. A relative in the senior corridors of law refers to social media as ‘virtual vibandas1’. Let’s see how my relationship with my virtual kibanda evolves next week, shall we?

Sketchbook

A few weeks ago, I stumbled on Virgil Abloh’s archived talk at Harvard School of Design, from 2017. I know Virgil as a figure in the design (mostly fashion) industry, but this talk was a deep dive into who Virgil really is. His “Personal Design Language”.

In his talk he breaks down his use of his signature “figures of speech” or quotation marks if you will—a feature unique to his creations, mostly with his label Off-White. Even more fascinating for me was how he merges his divergent backgrounds of architecture, engineering and creative arts. I’ve seen cases where people cross-breed skills they studied for their work, but not as proactively as Virgil does.

This sent me thinking. What could be the real currency of not just designers but people involved in directly or indirectly producing stuff, especially those producing art. I haven’t seen many of them fluidly lay out their supporting pillars. Say for example a painter defining his/her design ethos that can be traced to their artwork. Or a software engineer articulating their stack logic that is ultimately visible in the software. Could a “Personal Design Language” be ultimately dependent on your creations. Reversibly, could we dissect who you are from your work? The subject, however, is rightfully vague for deeper introspection. I look forward to dissecting this in an essay about what my design language is against conventional ethos.

How could we build on first principles to define a sturdy “Personal Design Language” ?

A Letter to The Postman

A few things happened this week to warrant for optimism for the future. However, on top of them all was the SpaceX prep launch, far away from home soil. I’ve never been excited about previous rocket launches, but this one felt closer to home. It’s a story of how one man inspired by science sparked a ground-breaking paradigm shift to space travel, and to see it acknowledged and respected was another thing. I was on the stream from T minus 2 hours till T minus 15 minutes when the weather didn’t play ball. I couldn’t help put a contrast of ambition between the U.S and Kenya. It’s easier to get mad at the contrast but I chose to re-imagine what building an ideal future would look like.

This humorous version is also one way to recognize where some of our priorities are.

Given anger and humor as a response, I’ll always go for humor. I couldn’t have put it in a better way:

You couldn’t ignore the state respect directed at the astronauts, Bob and Doug. Perhaps, a good starting point for Kenya would be nurturing and appreciating our own. But that doesn’t happen without systems that work for our talented/ambitious work force. We Kenyans have a habit of waiting until other people/companies/countries to recognize and tap into our potential then later

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*Appreciation to my *editor for crossing t’s and dotting i’s.*

“You seem to have done everything right this week except read a book.”—my editor’s response today. So my feelings are hurt. Let’s meet for Tusk next week, a couple of books later.

*editor prefered to stay anonymous.

Footnotes:

About this Tusk Series

  1. Vibanda is huts for Swahili. ↩