sincerity in lowercase

This blog, so far as I can tell, has probably about a million readers who aren’t fond of commenting.  Which is fair enough.  It’s an honor just to have a million readers.

Comments are great things though.  Some people are fortunate enough to have enough commenting friends to sustain their motivation.  Not me, though.  I have a special breed of friend, one a bit apathetic.

“But, Mr. Bentley.”  (Please, please, call me Derek.)  “Whatever do you mean? A special breed of friend?”

I’m glad that you asked, reader.  See, when I ask people to comment on a post I don’t get a “Great post, man” or a “Yeah! I can totally relate!”   I get this:

One comment. Just ONE comment from ONE friend.  “wow, that is surely a killer logo.  well done, bentley.”

“What’s wrong with that comment?” you ask.  Nothing really.  Nothing at all.  It’s a pretty nice comment.

EXCEPT IT WAS SUBMITTED UNDER MY OWN USERNAME. I ask for friends to comment, only one follows through with it, but they make sure to login as me before they comment and now it looks like I commented my own post.

This, dear reader, has been a lesson in patheticness.

For the past few days I’ve been hacking away at WordPress and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not yet acquired what would commonly be considered “good coding practices.”  I’m first and foremost a designer.  So while I’m 99% sure this design I made won’t get through the XHTML verifier, I’m also 99% sure that this is one of the greatest (if not *the* greatest) logo I have ever made.

The premise of AfricanDownshift.com is that this guy — Matt — is traveling through the continent of Africa on his motorcycle.  You’ve probably deduced that, since I’m designing it, it’s not exactly active yet.  But I have high expectations for this one.  Who doesn’t dream of traveling?  I do, anyway, so I’ll probably be living vicariously through this one.

Tonight I happened upon what is probably the single greatest Twitter visualization ever.  I’ve used Twitter before and came away pretty unimpressed, but once I saw Twistori I was actually inspired enough to log back into my Twitter account for the first time in months and get the code to add the widget you see to your right.

Twistori is quite possibly the most postmodern thing I have ever seen.  It’s a bit like the minimalist’s PostSecret except not so secret and, for the most part, not shocking.  I actually think it’s lack of shock is what makes it.  It squeezes a certain profundity out of the most mundane things.  There’s a column on the left full of multicolored verbs: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish.  When you click on one of the verbs, a list of recent tweets start drifting upward, each containing the verb of your choice.

“I feel exhausted for some reason.”

“I think I’m going to be in a coma after all that raspberry frosting.”

“I wish I could buy back the woman you stole.”

Each scrolling item is a glimpse into someone’s reality and that is the part that trips me out.  It’s like reading the beginning of the story and feeling compelled to create the end.  For example, one tweet I just saw said, “I think I might swing by the apartment and surprise her.”   I don’t know who wrote it, male or female, or why they would surprise her.  I like to think it’s something happy or romantic or mysterious in some beautiful way.  Suppose she is sick… NO!.  Suppose she is sick AND it is her birthday.  She’s just divorced her husband and her high school sweetheart is in town.  He decides to stop by.  He decides to tweet about it.

Am I the only one who feels compelled to create stories from the most modest of facts?

It does create some kind of mystery, though.

I’m trying to get this blog organize so it will actually have some kind of helpful content. Every month I plan on doing this thing I’m calling Links in Lowercase. I’ll make a list of the top three most helpful sites I’ve used during the month and list them here with a short description. They will be related to freelancing in general, writing, graphic design or entrepreneurship. Let’s get started!

FreelanceSwitch
This is the site that helped motivate me to move into freelancing in the first place. They offer wonderful reviews of tools for freelancers, great advice for both the business and creative side of things and how to maximize your ventures profitability. Despite the wonderful content, the number one reason I ended up going to this site is that it has such a wonderful design. In this case, you can judge a book by its cover!

ZenHabits
I love this place. It has a wonderful design (I think it’s run by the same people as FreelanceSwitch) and they offer tips on keeping your life organized and simple. Simplicity is key.

Unclutterer
Similar to ZenHabits, but more focused on organizing. Beautiful design and I love the workspaces they show off. They are always clean and well-designed (and almost always including an Apple computer.)

Over the past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of getting a paying writing job and some logo work. I am officially freelancing. The tool that has helped me more than any thus far is 37signals’ Backpack. When I first opened the account I had no idea what to do. It’s a service with unlimited options and for that, it seemed, no options. I couldn’t imagine how I would use it. In the beginning I only had the vague idea of a to-do list. I wanted a simple daily to-do list that could be accessed from anywhere. The way Backpack is set up you have a few options at the top. You can add a List to the page, a Note, a Writeboard, a Divider and a Tag. They are added instantly when you click. So, using the List feature I was able to get a simple to-do going. I thought that was all I’d ever use it for. As things went on and I needed to be more organized, I was able to add another page with Monthly goals separated by weeks and by those that will take place over the entire month. Then I decided to make a calorie counter page. I don’t know what I’ll make next. The examples page has so many diverse pages, people planning a wedding, organizing guitar tab, selling stuff, choosing fonts. There are plenty of ways to use it, that’s what makes it so intimidating to start and so addictive once you do.