right on time

hey! welcome to my journal. i intend to be pretty unfiltered here (as any good journal should be). but hope to process through the crazy time we live in and maybe make a friend or encourage someone else along the way while i think out loud. so grab a cozy bev and settle in, if you’d like. it’s okay to take our time.

could i be moving faster? sure. will i be faster in 6 months? definitely. am i getting things done? also yes! is my work as good as i want it to be? no! but i’ll keep learning and learning and learning.

it’s been said before but i’ll say it again… perfection is the enemy of good. something is better than nothing. for those of us introspective types, i don’t know if i’m capable of being impulsive. everything is always at least a little thought through. i think that means i can take comfort in the thought that caring and putting forth effort means i’ve at least tried to do my job. even when i miss the mark. creating something gives you a starting point, at the very least.

being a designer about two years into my career means that i finished learning the “design process” right when AI came in like a tornado. i’m not mad about it. i’m thankful to have the fundamentals and to have learned “the hard way”. but even so, i didn’t have a lot of time to get reps in before it felt like i was running around like a chicken with my head cut off while my developer builds a design that took me a month, in a single work day (thank you, Mitch, you’re a legend). this is the reality of our new era. it’s exciting and it’s scary. but i can’t keep up with my team’s pace and i’ve been feeling like i’m behind.

but what if i’m… not? the pace i can move at is the pace i can move at. design is a different beast. problem solving and iterating are inherently thoughtful undertakings. creating something from nothing still requires a human. don’t get me wrong, AI is amazing and so helpful. especially for someone with spaghetti for brains like me (it’s a tangled mess in there). but solving complex problems isn’t (usually) a one-shot prompt to Claude. and maybe that’s a good thing. being thoughtful takes time. caring takes time. solving the right problem takes time. deciding the right problem to solve takes time.

i’m not saying anything new or revolutionary here. mostly a word of encouragement to myself. it’s a fun time to be empowered by AI to build things (as someone who ignored their dad’s advice to take coding classes in high school). Claude and i built the site this post is on, which i never would have dreamed of even a year ago.

so… while i keep learning and the tools keep improving… maybe i’m not behind. maybe i’m right on time. and maybe, so are you.

— e.s.