The past couple weeks my baby has been learning to crawl. She wants to be on the floor and on the go all the time. Anything she can get her hands on she’ll use to pull herself up.

Just by trying over and over again - and by falling over a lot - she’s growing stronger and more confident every day.

I stopped on my way to work a couple times this week to take pictures with my iPhone 4s.

These pictures were taken near Smokehouse Cove. I did add the enhance filter on the phone, but that was all the editing I did.

Getting a great picture has a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time. But even more than that you’ll need a camera! Having a really nice point-and-shoot camera in my pocket at all times is an amazing thing. I’m plan on pulling over to the side of the road every chance I get.

About 10 years ago, I was standing out in the garden with my dad. He had a garden every year and took good care of it when we were home.

We spent our summers at the beach which was a 4 hour drive away; the garden was mostly hit or miss depending on the weather. Some years there would be buckets of tomatoes and other years, not so much.

I was standing out there with him as he was picking tomatoes, bruised or rotting fruits were tossed into the woods that lined our backyard. He explained,

“You have to pick the bad tomatoes or the plant will waste all of it’s energy trying to make them better instead of making new healthy tomatoes.”

I enjoy making things, websites, designs, paintings or songs and hopefully now blog posts. But there are often times in my own work where I run into dead ends, things aren’t working out and I’m trying to nurse a rotting design back to life. It’s best to toss that design to the side and concentrate my efforts on making great work rather trying to save bad work.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

The late, great Steve Jobs really nailed “creativity” with this statement. He was partially being modest about his own products, but what he said here is true.

Our experiences both positive and negative are everything that shapes us to be the people we are. But to produce great work and create new things it’s not enough to collect experiences. It’s important to take the time to reflect, think things through and give our brains the permission - and the capacity - to make connections.

Life can feel really long when you’re in it. My lovely wife and I have been blessed with two beautiful daughters. Looking at my girls, it’s impossible to imagine them growing up. But I know they will. And I want to take advantage of every moment I have with them and give it every ounce of effort I can. I don’t know how long I will live. Most people don’t. But I want to look back at my time on this earth and be confident that I spent it the best way I could.

Now that brings me to this site, I’ve been working on this website for WAY too long. There have been multiple versions and a lot of experimentation along the way. While I don’t consider that wasted time I really don’t have anything to show for it other than a bunch of files I will never use. I have a theory that you’re not really learning unless you challenge yourself and let yourself be vulnerable to criticism.

So although this site is not finished (and may never be), I have to push it live and start putting my focus where it needs to be. On the content. I love design, but all I’ve been doing is redecorating a blank page over and over. Enough. It’s time to focus my mind on making good work - writing, design or anything else. Then I can design this website around that work/content.

So what does this have to do with my family? Worrying about this site has been an unnecessary and trivial stress that I can do without. Time to push this boat out to sea (sink or swim) so I can spend more time creating things and being with the people I love. My life, my family and this website will be all the better for it.