Encountering Issues

I have begun to take on website projects as well as commission graphic art and design and my responsibilities as a senior Biochemistry student, bartender and officer in the Mizzou service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. I wonder if I am working in too many different directions. I really was hoping my interests would converge at some point into what would become the job I create for myself. Solidarity dear friends.

I just want to express my frustration with web projects. When someone asks for a website, they must not be thinking about what they want, rather, just the notion that "Hey, a website with my name on it would be cool." I'm sure every designer has encountered this. The client decides to ask for something they have not thought about, but hope will materialize from their imagination onto the Web. 

Scratch that. Materialize from the designer's computer, telepathically from their own minds, onto the web. Sound about right?


What is the answer? Draft a worksheet, like from grade school, with blanks to fill in so a McWebsite can be cranked out? or do you try and heft the client's idea from the depths of the chasm where a brain ought to be?

Broad Skills, limited Time

Two weekends ago I was able to attend the Sonja Hillgren/Farm Journal Agricultural Journalism Field Reporting Institute through the University of Misouri– Columbia school of Journalism and Agricultural Journalism School. Three days on a bus, driving across Missouri; a group of journalists and students visited farms, urban gardens, distributers, and community centers.  We were exhausted and sleep deprived. Our faculties worn, and mentors watching, we questioned, interviewed and reported at each stop. We made connections and tried to grasp at the big picture; gathering bits and pieces of information to form a story.  

Ok, I know, a little dramatic, but we had a great time and it was exhausting.  I was trying something new and had experts observing me.  

This past weekend I attended the Biotech University sponsored by the United Soybean Board. The seminar, based on presenting background information on biotechnology and its future as an industry, was another event hosted by the Journalism School at Mizzou.  Another foray into the foreign art of reporting, I have gotten used to being called out as an outsider. They call me "The Biochemist," a pretty cool nickname, if you ask me. 


Now I want to hone my pencil to a sharp tip and write a great story. Partially to prove myself, but more to learn to communicate well with other industries. I think studying science so often, I have lost some of my communication skills, and every time I write I think I learn a lot.

Too Many Ideas!

I have been watching TED videos, playing around on twitter (I follow Inhabitat, artists, scientists, science journals, all sorts of cool folks), and reading the news a lot lately.  That and working pretty much fills up my day.  Its gross.  I literally can wait until people come back for the summer so I can unload all this news and all these ideas off on them. I have so many awesome stories,  and I have watched so much, that I need my own project before I explode. 

<- This page is how my mind feels right now!


And by my own project, I do not include the Grad Program Problem or the housing issues or whatever else, but something constructive.

Retrofitting my hometown thanks to ideas from Ellen Dunham-Jone . (I need to learn to write grants first)
Redesigning my website and putting together a portfolio for my art stuff thanks to Aaron Beall.
Building some new appartment furniture and decorations from my own sketches and Bliks.

Dream Project

Study with:

Mitchell Joachim 

 
Archinode Studio

Ted Talk by Mitchell Joachim

I know the ideas he presents are wild ideas that may seem foreign and silly to some people, but try to look forward and really apply the concepts discussed. Employ your imagination, you can see that people could exist in a new environment using the concepts and technology Joachim discusses.

I want to live in a tree!

Jack Kerouac's On the Road

An iconic, famous piece of literature depicting and capturing an image of America's identity. It idealizes a wild dream all of us have entertained at some point of another —  Striking out across the country, not planning or even considering the consequences of our actions;  partying until the sun rises only to keep it going throughout the next day; restlessly riding trains, hitching, and fighting — to find the next great adventure.

We all can relate to this picture, this wild spirit, that erupts from the quiet, calm of our daily lives.  What is really wild and exciting about this story is that Kerouac models the plot after his own life and the lives of his compatriots.  Constituents of a movement that he was responsible for naming:  The Beat Generation.

I don't even know how to sum up this epic adventure.  Kerouac writes in a style that resembles a whirlwind.  Alternating from short and choppy conversation to all-encompassing monologues about life and god and philosophy.  The skinny of it is, too me at least, that the boldness of the human heart can take you anywhere and the path of your life may twist and turn, but in the end we are all on the same road — we are all searching.  I just hope we all can enjoy some Finding at some point.

"All these years I was looking for the woman I wanted to marry. I couldn't meet a girl without saying to myself, What kind of wife would she make?"

"I want to marry a girl... so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old.  This cant go on all the time — all this franticness and jumping around. We've got to GO someplace, find something."

"GOD EXISTS without qualms. As we roll along this way I am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us — that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel" (I hated to drive and drove carefully) — "the thing will go along of itself and you wont go off the road and I can sleep."

"Peace will come suddenly , we wont understand when it does— see, man?"

The Scroll, Kerouac's original manuscript On the Road.
Image from Maggie
http://flickr.com/photos/15932636@N00

Summer Rain

When it rains it pours, as they say. 

These past few weeks have been strange and difficult in ways I had not predicted.  Again my family has continued issues, but hopefully resolution is coming.  In a way our lives will always had a scar but in my experience scars show you have actually had experiences and gotten to feel life a little bit.  And they serve as a reminder that life is not always kind. 

I am a bartender/cook and an IT assistant.  Two jobs.  Two kind of crappy jobs. Steps is how I see them.  Merely rungs on a ladder.  I owe a lot of money and no task is truly below me.  Trouble is I ought to be putting my time in elsewhere.  I ought to be picking out grad schools.  I ought to be building a portfolio or working in a lab or writing my own research.  Not worrying about next months rent. 

So at least within reason, I am going to keep working.  But the struggle is mental.  I am struck repeatedly each day with the gravity of my family's flaws and the inadequacies that I may possess. 

I feel like I am smart enough to do science... but my skill is more in design.  I need to show myself and other people that that is where my skill is.  I know art, architecture, and design is something I can do... I just need to get out and DO it

Mental note: Anish Kapoor

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

There are many themes from this book that people growing up in America can relate to, of that I am certain.  In some ways the story about Charlie and his friends can be summed up by quoting Sam's monologue in the last letter before the epilogue:

"So tomorrow, I'm leaving.  And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going the be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. But right now I'm here with you. And I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do."

Charlie writes to us, the readers.  He trusts us as listeners and as people who don't "try to sleep with people even though you could have."  I won't go into much detail about the book, but I wish I had read it in high school.  I wish I would have read it my freshman year of high school.  I found myself thinking, throughout the story, that I had had a teacher who was like Bill.  Maybe things could have gone differently.  But then again, as Charlie astutely points out in the epilogue, as he comes to understand himself and really "be there"  : 

"We don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there."

Dear Charlie,

Thanks.

Love always,
Dan

Up next:  After 21 years of my life, I am going to read On the Road... and I hope it doesn't ruin me.