After seven years on the beach in LaLa land, it’s time to leave California in search of new life adventures. As of mid-may, I’ll begin relocating myself on the warm waters of Charleston South Carolina and starting a new job with a great company. My hope is to use these blog entries to track my thoughts as I head east, and a bit more south.
Started brewing my own craft beer the past year – excellent wintertime habit. Some of it’s even pretty palatable.
My favorite part of the process is creating the labels. First batch I ever did, my dog Tobey got ahold of & started chewing on the yeast packet… the last step in the brew day. Hence the beer was named Tobey Drool. I miss that part of my former life that allowed for creative freedom, so I’ve been entertaining myself with the labels and fictitious brand: Hound/Lab beer.
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The only positive thing to come out of my brothers departure from Charleston has been the fact he overbooked himself and couldn’t use his Band of Horses tickets. So I took one for the team and partied on a school-night. bummer.
About a year ago, these guys were hands down my favorite band. Their first album in particular helped me get through a pretty rough patch in my life. They’re Charleston locals, so every once in a while they do a “surprise” show with little notice. This was one of those shows – I think tickets were sold out before my brother even told me about the show. Hence why scoring his was a bonus…. Jeffy, this one is for you, their “pretend last song” of the night, funeral.
Went to the Pour House last night w/ the little brother – haven’t seen decent live music in a while so it was a rare treat. That and $1 PBRs (let’s just say we had quite the beer wall by the end of the night). Hadn’t heard that much of the Whigs prior to the show, but they rocked it with two opening bands Mean Streets and The Features….
UPDATE: On future review, found this nice little jem of a song on my iphone. Jeff, wait till the end for some quality banter. Something tells me we drank some PBR that night….
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Highlight of last weekend was joining my brother and company to be witness Charleston’s fifth Kulture Klash.
Like an adolescent rave with instillation art, the event took place in a dilapidated warehouse in North Chuck just outside of the artsy neighborhood of Park Circle. Break-dancers, techno, bmx stunts, couple hundred drunk art students, day-glow paint and beer. Made for a pleasant highlight to the weekend in the low-county. Especially dug a few of the art pieces, in particular a chandillier made of bike wheels and the painting to the left. If I had a camero, I’d want this stenciled on the hood!
A continuing part of my new life in Charleston is the new job that comes with it and re-wiring my brain around what design is. Moving from a creative agency to a software company, an intimate client facing environment to a larger, corporate environment has had some interesting effects. But one of the most interesting things has been the opportunities to design and think about what design can be.
My current morning practice is to get up a bit early and get in an hour+ of design work in, or read a good book to get my day off on the right foot. For the moment, that book is “inside Steve’s brain” – one that’s become increasingly popular around my company, and for good reason. As the company grows, they are increasingly looking for a brand to consolidate their array of products. And looking at the process of design, as the company shifts from one that makes software to one that is selling a brand. Increasingly, design leads such as myself are being looked to for advice – again opportunity.
This morning was Chapter 2: Despotism: Being a one-man focus group. Some really interesting take-always for me, especially considering I’ve been functioning as a one-man design show for years and the context of my new position. A lot of what I read has been reassuring in many ways – coming at design from a different direction than those building the product, gives you a unique understanding. Steve’s main asset isn’t that he understands the technology as well as the engineers creating it, but that he understands the users and is always pushing design. This is a strong concept for me, as it helps me think about where my value as a designer is to a company that writes software and needs that outside voice to help understand how to package and interact with the things they create.
So, here begins my on-going list of what we will call “Charleston-isms” as this new home grows on me:
Week three in Charleston? or is it week 4?
Got co-opted into my younger brothers kickball team – AWESOME! Nothing like drinking a few beers and pulling out a quad kicking a stupid red rubber ball! We found out last minute we made the “play-offs” (pretty sure everyone makes the playoffs) so team super-bad took the field for one more attempt at glory. good times.
Also had my first going out in the Chuck-Towne downtown; Not too shabby for a random Tuesday night. This could probably grow on me….
as a footnote, the new job is an ass-kicker, which is good! and I’m still talking to myself as according to wordpress the site has 0 traffic, which is actually more coforting than one would think….
Getting settled into that second week of living in Charleston; the odd ins and outs of the new commute; a new place to live; and a new work environment. The first week started with epic rain storms – nothing like arriving at day one of a new job in thunderstorms. Everything becomes quickly familiar by that second week… then something beautiful happens, and the sun catches the clouds just right as you drive home across the bridge back into downtown, and you notice that you’re beginning to fall in love with your new surroundings. Having gone from a 4 mile commute along the beach in California, to find these moments puts the smile back on my face.
So as the date approaches for me to hit that airplane and leave California in the dust, all sorts of shit is coming to mind that I’m going to miss that I probably didn’t think too much about when I went gun-ho after a job in South Carolina. And on the eve of my last full weekend in the south-bay, so we start the sad list of things I’m going to miss:
With a little more than 3 weeks left in sunny California, I can’t help to start making mental lists of stupid shit I’m going to miss in the South. OK, my Mint.com account already reveals a very scary shopping trend; in the fact that 90% of my purchases are food or booze from Trader Joe’s. Maybe this needs to be part of a larger thought – “shit I’m gonna miss from SoCal” list….
If I thought I had an obsession, this guy actually made a video about it…. LOL, he’s so correct about hot soccer moms in yoga clothes: http://www.thesneeze.com/2009/the-tjs-song.php
I don’t often think too highly of all the hoopla that goes into events, but it’s a bit different when you’re involved in the planning! I’d given my notice w/ my current job after 5 years, so I think I’ll just consider this one big ass party for Brad!
Months of work and planning, and we have Depeche Mode rocking “Personal Jesus” in front of the billboard I designed on the W Hollywood. Fucking outstanding.