There’s this satellite image of the hurricane Dorian that shook me. There are neither grids nor map-markers, no projections, no data. It is this still of a dangerously awesome-in-the-true-sense destroyer an “inch” — fifty or so miles — from the south-Florida coast. Somewhere there in the wisps of cloud that demarcate Dorian’s outer rain bands is Ft. Lauderdale - where I live.

My family and I spent the labor day weekend here moving s**t inside, waiting in half-hour long lines to fill-up on gas, freezing ziplocks filled with water just in case Dorian wobbled from its projection and merc’d us.

It was too wet to really go outside. Traffic sucked because folks were in a tizzy. Collective anxiety put a damper on the holiday, like a mental fog luring the house to nap randomly, play games, and doze again. Such was the weekend.

Circumstances have me suddenly thinking a lot about DevOps - which for someone who styles himself a service designer is like pulling teeth, or rather should you imagine the technology stack as a pond where the end-user interface is the shore, then I am wading chest deep. I hate this s**t.

But, on Monday, I sat here at my kitchen table fussing over an event queue while Freeport was blended by an eyewall churning property and people in roaring 200mph gusts for a dozen hours straight, stationary - roaring.

How lucky we are to be merely inconvenienced.

Memento mori.

Liking (❤) this issue of Stoic Designer is a super way to brighten my day. It helps signal to the great algorithms in the sky that this writeup is worth a few minutes of your day.

Stoic Designer is also now a podcast. You should be able to find it on your podcatcher of choice in the next day or two.

Remember that design is not art, but a practice.

Michael Schofield

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stoic.substack.com