Blog + Media
June 26 When it rains, it pours
Spring has come and gone. The northwest spent several weeks under drizzly, cooler than normal weather, and suddenly summer has arrived. And with it, a new city, new projects, a new office/home. In fact, almost everyday brings entirely new ups and downs. Without the familiarity of work to stay rooted in, I’d probably be drowning under the weight of it all. Since my first year in college, life seems to oscillate between long bouts of nose-grinding routine and short bursts of everything changing all at once—it is both terrifying and liberating.
The new city: Tacoma, WA, about halfway between Highway 16 and Pt. Defiance State Park. It’s a big, but secondary city about 30 minutes south of Seattle. So far, I’ve spent very few days actually getting out and exploring, although I’ve managed to get lost driving around several times, which is one of my favorite ways of discovering new places. And there are several fantastic grocery stores and farmers markets scattered throughout almost every neighborhood.
Several projects at Gridwork are currently either nearing completion or just taking off. For Global Explorers, we created a travel journal for a group of blind and sighted high-school students who hiked through Peru to the lost city of Macchu Pichu. Before that, we had the wonderful opportunity to work with the Center for Social Media, creating an entirely new online presence, and implementing some of the latest exciting web technologies along the way. And just today, we launched an interactive Flash-based map of the progressive media for In These Times.
Looking forward, we’re thrilled to be developing a new site with the Independent Press Association, which is currently in heavy development. We’re also working with a new group, The Media Consortium, on rolling out a centralized content management system and web application for content editors across the media landscape. They’ve developed a gorgeous, prototype site to skin the prototype application we demoed earlier this past Spring.
So while business is looking up and moving forward, it leaves less time to calm the chaos outside of work. It takes more effort than it should to carve personal time out for cooking or tennis or taking pictures, or anything truly relaxing. I’d like this summer to be about striving for that balance, and hopefully finding some peace.