I thought going through them all would be fun and nostalgic, if somewhat cringey. Maybe this expectation was fueled by an unacknowledged predilection for remembering my college days through a pleasant social lens rather than a fraught academic one, but I was unprepared for the overwhelming existential dread baked into the work. It’s not that I had forgotten about my poor performance as a student, it had just been a while since I properly marinated in how consistently poor it was. Decades later, some of my professors’ entirely valid comments still sting. Looks like a rush job. Needs more development. You need to stop procrastinating. What the comments qualified, my grades quantified: my transcript shows a 2.34 cumulative GPA, a feat achievable only after making up the 11 classes I failed, three of them in my major.

For the duration of my prolonged, eleven-semester stretch as an undergrad, I was stressed out full-time. I was constantly behind and unprepared, more often than not turning in work that was late and/or rushed. I got through it by convincing myself I really did care and I really was capable of much better, but apart from a few bright spots, there just wasn’t much evidence to support that.

Though I arguably matured and did better in the working world, adulthood and professional life didn’t flip some magic competence switch. I’ve lucked into associations with people and organizations of earned prestige, and I’ve done some work I’m proud of, but I’ve also disappointed clients and employers who had reason to expect more than they got. I still characteristically struggle with motivation, time management, and team dynamics, and I’ve been fired for cause more than once. Full-time jobs account for less than a third of my career, and the freelance work making up the balance has mostly been a hand-to-mouth grind. Retirement probably isn’t in the cards.

That persistent, self-loathing stress from my undergrad days never really went away; I just learned to live with it. But my defenses are wearing thin, and I’m tired.

The point here isn’t to beat myself up or feel sorry for myself, nor to suggest that institutional validation, academic or professional, has some intrinsic value. You may have had a bumpier road in school and work than I, and I wouldn’t dare judge you for that. The point, I think, is that for better or worse, we live in a society in which survival is predicated on economic participation, and I’m starting to realize the role I’ve made for myself hasn’t been a great fit.

I don’t pretend what I’m going through is unique. Today is my 50th birthday and I’m doing the mundane work of taking stock in the middle of a perfectly cliché midlife crisis. But I guess now is as good a time as any to finally learn that the work ain’t gonna do itself. So let’s see if I can’t find a path forward.

I got into graphic design because I wanted to make visual things, and a fine-art career seemed too steep a hill to climb. Form was the goal, function was the compromise. Over time, though, my work’s function flattened its form, and I lost touch with why I was doing it in the first place. I was convinced my creative skills were best put towards practical solutions to other people’s problems, and the more invisible my contribution, the better. I still believe there’s nobility in that pursuit, but the title of a talk I once gave about my journey, “From Self-Centered to User-Centered,” now strikes me as a false dichotomy. Reconnecting in recent years with making art for art’s sake, work that’s meant to be looked at rather than through, work that’s more about indulging curiosity than satisfying objectives, has been far more invigorating than any functional client work I can think of. And sure, many creative professionals would say the same of their own work. I’m just not so sure anymore that the creative me and the professional me need to have any association. So much of my favorite art is basically allergic to sustainable commerce, and my own attempts to bridge that gap are eating me alive.

Creativity is a muscle. Exercise it often to make it grow and keep it strong. But maybe what I’ve overlooked is that even the strongest muscles can’t flex all the time. They need rest. And when my creative energy prioritizes getting paid, there’s too often not enough left in the tank for the work that truly feeds me. All of the work, professional and personal, suffers as a result.

So I think I’m ready to be more protective of my creative energy and find a different way to get paid. How I’ll do that is an open question, but there was something else I found in those old piles of college stuff which may be instructive: a flyer for a hardcore show I attended in 1996. I keep a concert diary and that show was already logged there, but the flyer revealed that my diary entry not only failed to note two of the bands that played, the entry also had the wrong date. I was thrilled to be able to make these corrections, doubly so with the help of a physical artifact I thought had been lost to time. The concert diary is one facet of my website, which is essentially a carefully organized archive of almost everything I’ve chosen to share of myself online over the course of many years. As historical records go, it’s by no means important, at least not to most people who aren’t me, but I wonder if the kind of care I’ve put into it might be valuable to other historical records. My plan, then, is to learn more about the world of archivists and see if there’s a place there for me. If you know anything about the field, I’d love to hear from you.

A career change won’t solve all my problems. Neither art nor job will be easier just because I’ve decoupled them. Anxiety and distraction and bad habits will persist. Some therapy is probably a good idea. And who knows where we’ll all end up if the AI overlords have their way. All I can do is try my best. Here’s hoping that’s good enough.

• Tagged: June 2026, art, design, personal
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• Orlando
  Sally Potter, 1992, ★★★½
• High Noon
  Fred Zinnemann, 1952, ★★★½

Added to the music library:

• Architectonics
  Hoavi, 2026
• Temporal Shifter
  Microwaves, 2026
• Seismo
  Upsammy and Valentina Magaletti, 2026

• Tagged: May 2026
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• Tagged: May 2026, concert diary, event, music, Uranium Club, Mesh, NRG, Spruce Street Harbor Park, Philadelphia, PA
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This movie’s not for me, and there is so much of it, but Lord and Miller’s reliable charm sustained me even if it didn’t satisfy me. Some science nerd has probably mansplained why they didn’t visibly age Ryan Gosling like they did Sandra Hüller, but I will continue to disapprove.

• Tagged: May 2026, film diary, film, review, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, PFS at the Bourse, Philadelphia, PA
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• Cry-Baby
  John Waters, 1990, ★★★★

• Tagged: May 2026
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This franchise took a left turn when a weird cult in blonde wigs showed up at the very end of last year’s adequate-at-best 28 Years Later. It was a conspicuously goofy addendum, and it feels even less natural when the psychotic, Teletubbies-obsessed cult takes center stage in this direct sequel, roaming the post-apocalyptic British countryside looking for un-zombified victims to carve up in Satanic sacrifice. Elsewhere on the island, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, both films’ MVP by a mile, but still unable to save the material from itself) passes the time spinning Duran Duran hits while trying to rehabilitate a well-hung zombie who looks like he was fired from the WWE for refusing to bathe. These two narrative strands inevitably entwine, culminating in—you guessed it—a flaming Iron Maiden dance number around a 30-foot tower of skulls.

The ingredients sound like unhinged fun, but the stew they make is just too self-consciously rich, whether it’s desperately trying to shock you with the cult’s nihilistic bloodlust or move you with Kelson’s tender optimism.

One thing The Bone Temple does right is to sideline Spike, the young protagonist of the previous film’s coming-of-age story, but his cartoonish innocence still gets enough screen time to grate. If the box office gods are forgiving, his puppy-dog eyes will be back yet again in the next film to join forces with at least one very familiar face from from 28 Days Later for some full-circle fan service.

• Tagged: May 2026, film diary, film, review, Nia DaCosta
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I had a great time with this one. I wish I had gotten it together to see it in a crowded theater. I also wish its office politics were less generic, and that its crummy digital effects weren’t one more drop in the ocean of reasons I’m convinced computers were a mistake. But man, it had been way too long since we had a fresh opportunity to picture Sam Raimi cackling from behind the camera as he drowns his actors in buckets of glop. Anyone in Hollywood could have made Send Help a serviceable popcorn thriller, but only Raimi, bless him, would go above and beyond to make it this gross and this funny.

• Tagged: May 2026, film diary, film, review, Sam Raimi
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For a few years, I was learning faster than at any other time in my life. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I went from feeling like I was in over my head to feeling incredibly competent.

I could do anything.

I don’t know if I’ll get to a place where I share his optimism for what’s to come, but his smarts and thoughtfulness certainly make me want to try.

For the first time in years, I see possibility. Not utopia. AI’s problems aren’t being exaggerated. Like every technology before it, it will reflect the people building it. But possibility is the right word for what I’m feeling, and I haven’t felt it in a while. Not just for young people who haven’t lost their enthusiasm. For people who have been here long enough to remember when the web was open, generous, optimistic, and built by people who simply wanted to make things and share them with the world. That sharing was an expression of our gratitude, and that gratitude is still there.

I think experience matters now more than ever. I think curiosity matters. And I think a lot of people who may have quietly counted themselves out have something important to contribute.

I hope you’re right, Chris. Happy birthday!

🔗 Go to this link

• Tagged: May 2026, technology, links, Chris Shiflett
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I’m known to enjoy a film made by clumsy amateurs reaching for something beyond their means, and this unfathomably earnest love letter to the beach towns of Delaware is definitely that. But even if its many perplexing choices provoke the occasional chuckle, its failed attempts to mine drama from Holocaust survivors, homophobia, and sexual assault make it cringeworthy in all the wrong ways. To make matters worse, it has a character named Gallagher who doesn’t smash a single watermelon.

• Tagged: May 2026, film diary, film, review, Raghav Peri, PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA
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I’m not big on movies loudly foregrounding firearms these days, so I thought it might not be the best time to finally watch Hard Boiled, but I did it anyway, and even though it may be the single most trigger-happy movie I’ve ever seen, its effect is entirely different than what I’ve come to expect from most movies fitting that description. I read a review that derides Hard Boiled as less symphony than juvenile heavy metal power ballad, but I don’t think it’s either of those things. The latter would make it a Michael Bay movie. The former would make it, I don’t know, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? But Hard Boiled is its own phantasmagoria, fully aware of how outlandish its extravagant violence is, and fully committed to that outlandishness like a solemn oath.

• Tagged: May 2026, film diary, film, review, John Woo
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