Before I did all this web stuff, I used to be a restaurant manager. Then September 11, 2001, happened, the hospitality industry in DC tanked, and then I didn’t really have a career anymore.

Nearly a year of not working was filled with various endeavors of varied importance, and at one point, in an unfamiliar university computer lab in Ottawa, wearing all black with the smell of tear gas in my hair, I learned a little bit of HTML because I thought it could help me save the world.

But back to the main story: I used to be a restaurant manager. Everybody thinks it was a radical career change from restaurants to user experience design, but in reality, they’re almost the exact same job.

Because think about it: going to a restaurant is an experience. Someone designs that experience. And that someone is the restaurant manager.

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My project meetings are awesome.

This is because I personally don’t like meetings that waste my time, and I really don’t like being bored, so I do my best to make sure those things don’t happen to other people at my meetings.

The keys to having awesome meetings are actually pretty simple: (1) keep it small; (2) listen and ask questions; and (3) don’t end without next steps.

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I am alone. In the woods.

Not at the moment you’re reading this of course; in the intervening time I typed it all into my computer. But as I’m writing this, it’s 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday night and I’m writing longhand in a notebook, a near-illegible mix of Palmer cursive and printing. It’s hard to write when you’re crouched over your notebook so it doesn’t get too wet in the rain.

This is my first time backcountry camping. That essentially just means that I’m in the middle of the woods. I’m not camping next to my car, and I’m also not camping next to other people. There aren’t bathrooms or picnic tables or wifi. Just me and the trees.

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My house is full of boxes. And piles of various things. I can’t move without tripping over something.

I would say I’m not usually this disorganized, but that would be a lie. However, the boxes are new.

I’m getting ready to sell my house, and my realtor has strongly admonished me that I have too much stuff, so I need to clear a bunch of it out so my house can be nicely staged while I spend a few months pretending I don’t actually live in it.

Meanwhile, the boxes and the piles of stuff: some things are going to storage for a few months, and other things are going to Goodwill.

I started with books, because I thought they would be easy. Their rectangular shape makes them fit into boxes well, and they require no additional padding. Should be a breeze, right?

Until I started packing, and counting, and how in the world did I accumulate more than a thousand books?

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