learnings
Have you written your letter to the Great Pumpkin this year? He only visits one sincere pumpkin patch each Halloween, so you better put your pen to paper soon, if you haven’t already. Here’s mine. The letter reads: Dear Great Pumpkin, I want to tell you about my
learnings
That time of year, again. Sharing more good ol’ goals. And, actually, if you look at the date on this post, it’s a little past that time of year, but the Post Your Goals On Time Police rarely patrol these parts, so we should be safe. I’m not
reviews
If you read my design article with Smashing Magazine, you know I’m not a huge fan of star ratings, but I like writing reviews. They remind me of what I enjoyed or wished was different, and they help me make recommendations, which I also like doing. With that in
learnings
Apparently, Squarespace has an AI feature that helps people write. Always curious to toy with new tech—even if I don’t intend to continue using it—of course I tried it. I asked it to sum up my goals from Q2. And according to AI, I spent a lot
learnings
If you read my goals for this quarter, you know this entry is a few days late, but life (and other writing projects) happen. On we go. Some time back, my favorite writing podcast, The Bestseller Experiment, mentioned writing with a Central Dramatic Argument in mind. The concept comes from
writing resource
The first quarter has come and gone, seemingly as fast as a cobbler elf in the night. So now we’re here, early April, and it’s time to review what I completed and what’s coming next. You can learn more about my goals process from the January post.
design
I set goals most quarters, and January often sets the tone for the year. Writing goals can feel like starting a mini-story. I’m the character, I jot down what I want to achieve, and then, like a fun first draft, I set out to see how the story unfolds.
writing advice
This entry turned out longer than expected. I had planned to write about a small piece of good writing news, but I found that the backstory was relevant, and important for me personally, to jot down. So here we go. # Once, before I understood query letters and the amount of
health
I helped create a sabbatical benefit with the company I work for, and I am using the benefit mid-July through mid-October. I was the sixth hire and have been at the company almost nine years. Contributing to growing the business and devoting myself to learn as much as I could—
learnings
I’m writing an article about star ratings, the ambiguity of them, mainly focused on how they fail readers. While writing the piece, I’ve read a number of articles for research. Several are linked to in the article, but not all. I’m sharing most of them here for
learnings
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Image from Wikimedia Commons. [https://www.mattathanasiou.com/caption] I remember our first date. I started watching Peaky Blinders because, in addition to the dark, atmospheric setting, the opening credits uses the song Red Right Hand by my
design
I wrote in a previous entry that I designed too many versions of this site and wanted to stop. While that entry talks about how I ended up with the current iteration, I saved several of the unused versions. Here are a few mock-ups of those iterations, along with brief