My simple answer was, “Dear, you see, I need to go to work so I can make money, so we can have nice things and eat nice meals.” She accepted that answer as truth.

What I didn’t say was that I enjoy going to work. That there are days when going to work is a break from the kids, as much as I love them, and that while I would certainly rather spend the day with her and her brother, there are times when I need to get out and think at an adult level.

I didn’t mention that I don’t work for the money, but for the challenge – for the drive, for the thrill of making things, for the rush that comes with collaborating with other people.

I just said I was going to make money. It was the easy answer. Because I didn’t have the time – nor did she have the attention – for me to tell her truth: that it’s much much more complicated than that.

Deforestation

If there’s one thing that fuels today’s grab for pageviews, it’s opinions. Hard ones. This or that. Nothing in between. Nothing that veers into the hazy grey field of compromise.

“Summarize that,” they say. “Give me the bullet point version,” they demand. Time is of essence. Boil it down so it no longer needs thought.

So when we talk about whether the New York Times should be more vigilant in their fact checking, or whether yoga will cause you irreparable harm, we’re predisposed to boil it down to the most simple argument. I know I do this. We all do, in some ways.

Maybe it’s not our fault. Maybe we’ve been taught to believe that the ability to create concise descriptions of complicated things is a sign of success when. Really, it’s the opposite. You’ve succeeded when you can explain a complex subject without losing the nuance. I know: that’s hard to do. So we summarize. So we cut corners. We ignore the complexity.

It’s not a matter of missing the forest for the trees – it’s that we’re cutting down all of the trees and wondering where the forest went.

On Argument

A year and a half ago, during the 2010 South Dakota Festival of Books, I watched Michael Hart – the late founder of Project Gutenberg – and Michael Dirda – Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic – present a panel on “Reading in the Digital Age.”

As one might expect, Hart spoke at length about how the printed book was dead, that all writing should be done digitally for the benefit of mass consumption and for those who may not be able to afford a printed tome. Dirda, on the other hand, spoke about the necessity of aesthetics, of the tactile nature of holding a book in your hand, of the feeling of being that you cannot recreate in an e-reader.

Both made some good points. But the title of the panel is misleading. This presentation was no more about reading in the digital age than it was about koala mating habits. Where we expected some sort of solid discourse on where print vs. digital may eventually compromise, we instead received a kind of ribald sniping. It was a battle between two opposing viewpoints, both refusing to admit middle ground, incapable of giving an inch.

While the answer lie somewhere in the middle of the pitch, these two men fought over which side of the field to enter.

Respecting Complexity

If a single idea has followed me around this year, from politics to art and work to friendships, it’s been this one: “it’s more complicated than that.”

It’s centrally important to seek simplicity, and especially to avoid making things hard to use or understand. But if we want to make things that are usefully simple without being truncated or simplistic, we have to recognize and respect complexity — both in the design problems we address, and in the way we do our work.

Erin Kissane, “What I Learned About the Web in 2011″ via A List Apart

My experience at the South Dakota Festival of Books is no different than any experience one might find watching cable television, or at a political debate, or when discussing which Led Zeppelin album is the best. We’ve been trained to take a side and dig in for battle.

When we go to battle intellectually, we find comfort in absolutes. They afford us a bit of security. There are no holes to be poked in our theories.

Part of the challenge of art and science and rhetoric is in finding the nuances; there is no topic worth discussing that doesn’t hold some grey area, and there is no grey area that is worth ignoring. But grey areas? They’re hard. So we ignore them. And that’s how misinterpretation seeps into our lives.

Naming Things

Take, for example, the industry in which I work: web design, development and strategy. For the past several years, people have tried to put together a simple, concise description of content strategy – what is it, and how do we quickly explain it to our bosses? We understand that there’s a need for that description in a business sense, but our answer is often lacking in nuance. We trade length for clarity; we discard the messy details to gain a certain level of buzzworthiness.

Truth is, content strategy means different things to different people. What’s more, THAT’S OKAY. Just as “web development” means different things to different people, we still have freedom to interpret our work in a way that makes sense to us.

So we stick with “content strategy” – an awkward word that barely captures the extent of what we do. But we’re not alone in this: language is hard, and though we struggle to assign simple words to complex arrangements, and though they may seem trite and inaccurate, oftentimes it’s the best we can do.

Communication isn’t perfect. Again: THAT’S OKAY.

This is not an industry-specific thing, either. Ask someone to explain the scientific method. Depending on their field of expertise, you may hear several variations of the base process. Ask someone to explain something with a clear purpose and structured set of rules – baseball, for instance. Ask a baseball fan. Ask a baseball historian. Ask someone with no connection to the game. To some, it’s a game. To others, it’s a past-time. To the haters, it’s a distraction.

Black. White.

Words allow us to communicate. But they also fail us, in that we’re driven to compress theories that should, in fact, become more robust. We’re taught to say more with less, to edit and edit until there’s nothing left to chance, to push things into a smaller box. So we cut the non-crucial elements. And we lose the nuance. And we wonder why this seemingly complicated theory has been boiled down to a Cliff’s Notes version – all solution, no reasoning.

Sure, most things should be said in fewer words. But there are a lot of things that should be said in more.

We’re challenged to understand the future in as complete a way as possible. To shy away from absolutes, and to embrace the grey area, charging in full speed and making sense of the fray. There are discoveries there. There is truth. There is completeness.

We can’t take one side or the other – not in good faith – without understanding that, regardless of the subject, it’s often more complicated than that.

War is good. War is bad. It’s more complicated than that.

We should be liberal. We should be conservative. It’s more complicated than that.

We should fight to stay neutral, and we should always look at all angles of a subject, and we should stop trying to sum up incredibly complex processes and concepts and feelings into simple, single-serving soundbites. We should run to the middle and be implicit in our embrace.

Except, let’s be honest.

It’s more complicated than that.

The word “evolve” has two similar but very different meanings. One, “to develop over successive generations as a result of natural selection,” is the traditional scientific definition of evolution. The other, “to develop gradually from a simple to a more complex form,” is simply a synonym for “change.”

One plays verb to the noun that is “evolution.” The other is misleading – it’s nearly the opposite of evolution. Saying your view has evolved, or that your child’s vocabulary has evolved, indicates that one single thing has shifted and changed and improved over time. Evolution, however, is not concerned with individuals: it’s the shift through generations of genes via the theory of natural selection.

Evolution doesn’t mean a thing just CHANGES, like a monkey becomes a man overnight. This isn’t Kafka. There ain’t no cockroaches under that bed.

When you hear ill-advised rebuttals of evolution based on things like “I didn’t come from no monkeys” or “How can the eye have just evolved to what it is – that’s nearly impossible!” I fear that the concept of evolution is being watered down thanks to the accepted use of “evolve” as a synonym for “shift” or “change”.

Evolution takes a very long time. That’s kind of how it works. It may take 30 generations of humans to weed out a faulty trait. Or longer. But, in terms of geologic time, it’s merely a blip, and it’s this relative spacing that keeps us from evolving … ahem … clarifying our view on evolution.

You do not “login” to a website. That’s just not a word. You “LOG IN.” “Login” is a thing. That’s the login, which is where you log in.

Next time, I refuse to have the argument. Next time, thanks to The Lone Gunman, I can simply direct the offending party to this site: loginisnotaverb.com.

Despite what many people –mostly in the computer field– think, “login” is not a verb. It’s simply not. Whether or not “login” is a word at all may spark a debate in some circles, but assuming it is then it may act as many parts of speech, but not as a verb.
I will repeat the important part for clarity: “login” is not a verb. It’s simply not.

Case closed. I hope.

It wasn’t that this conference had a slew of inspirational speakers, either, because to be honest not all of them were all that inspirational. Some of them sort of talked about themselves without offering any real insight, and others outlined their book for an hour, and still others tried hard not to drop names but couldn’t be helped.

But there’s something about OTA Sessions. Something pretty special. Something we don’t usually get in Sioux Falls.

OTA Sessions was about something and the speakers all offered context and though I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know, that’s not really what these conferences are for.

I didn’t receive any knowledge. That’s cool.

In it’s place, I received rejuvenation. All offered through three overarching themes.

Embrace your differences

Like Sally Hogshead says: it’s up to us to be ourselves. To steer clear of becoming someone we’re not. To find our difference and own it.

Being the underdog works. No marketing bull here, please – living in South Dakota is a constant fight to overcome our differences. It sharpens our tenacity and provides us with opportunities to embrace a landscape and culture that no one else can make claim to.

Our teachers and parents always tell us to “be ourselves, don’t follow the crowd, etc.” and we brush it off knowing we’ll grow into fantastic humans if we just get into the right cliques but, surprise!, we find that the best ideas and greatest moments come from those wackos who, for whatever reasons, clung to who they are and refused to be stripped of the junk they were born with.

Don’t patronize the differences. Just find them and make them great. Do that, and you’ve suddenly become interesting. What’s more: you’ve given yourself the freedom to brush off criticism.

Own your location

In the Midwest, most look to escape as fast as they can. Good for them. Maybe they’ll find their muse elsewhere. They have all of my well wishes.

That being said, I’ve got no patience for Midwest haters: the arrogance, the dismissal, the trivial comparisons. We’re not New York. We’re not Los Angeles. We’re nowhere, and that’s why we’re great – undeveloped by trends, we’re blank canvases, where creativity and innovation rule not out of vocation, but out of necessity.

To fill in the spaces, we must create.

Ultimately, there are two types of people who grow up in South Dakota – those who move away, and those who have the strength to stick around and make something with what they’ve been given.

On Friday, the Orpheum filled with the latter. Inspiring on its own, without the speakers, without OTA. Just that fact made me want to be better at what I do.

Accept your inadequacies

Because, ultimately, there are still people who still struggle with making something great.

For example: imagine you’re at a conference, surrounded by hundreds of intelligent people, watching speaker after speaker discuss their successes and insight and goals.

Before long you realize how far you have to go before making a significant difference in the world. How much work it is to be good at what you do. How much harder you have to work to be one of the great ones. How none of this is easy.

It’s a rush of forced inspiration, like adrenaline during a bear attack. To get from A to B you need a dose of reality-based C: a kick in the saggy pants and a yell from your idols – “YOU’RE STILL NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH.”

Happens every time. It’s always just in time, too. For two years, OTA Sessions has been a constant dose of humble pie. With a side of whipped panic.

Ultimately, OTA – itself a twisted acronym that stands for “Originality + Action,” isn’t about creativity or marketing or social media. It’s about community. It’s about displaying the power of an active and blossoming community, filled with people who stay true to the region, who aren’t afraid to be themselves and aren’t afraid to break away from the typical cynicism of talented professionals and dive straight into a new project.

To make something great on the ground they live on. To celebrate their differences. To live thinking that “anything is possible” isn’t as ridiculous as it seems.

No hyperbole. Watching a child learn to write is as powerful as you can get.

Because, you see, I thought I’d spent the last seven years learning how to write. No. Not right. Instead, I spent the last seven years how to write better or how to write for the internet or how to write copy and scripts.

But Sierra is learning how to write. Full stop. End of story. She is not learning style or function, but the basic steps of writing. Not first steps, but first phonics. Not first word, but first signature.

I have written a lot of things in my life. Some of it has been okay and some of it has been decent and some of it might even have been good if you ask the right people but none of it compares to the power of each letter Sierra pushes out of her pencil.

Every. Letter. S. I. E. R – twice. A.

The potential and promise of every letter, each more important and amazing than anything I’ll ever hope to write.

“Suffering from bloggers’ disease lately: the paralysis that results from trying to reach the skies with every post. Expect more frequent snacking to accompany the main courses.”

I know. His blog post had NOTHING to do with “bloggers’ disease” outside of a small P.S. at the end, but seriously.

What a fantastic term. I can totally relate.

(Also, his “snack” about branding is pretty spot on, too.)

They have consequences, regardless of what we want to believe. They are fueled by thought and disseminated through action. We may try to write them off as “only words,” but words are powerful and consequential. They have meaning.

Words provoke action. They are at the base of every powerful political speech, every heartbreaking dramatic scene, every rousing pep talk. Words incited 60s racism. Words helped change culture. Words drove people to elect a black President.

We live in a word that’d dominated by communication, and we see that communication take many forms. Ultimately, the base of all communication is words, whether they’re spoken or written or inferred. Everything that’s posted or said or sung or stuttered out in Morse code can be interpreted and comprehended and acted upon.

Given enough build up, words can cause panic. Passion. Hatred. Fear. Violence.

You can use your voice to rile up a crowd to the point that they begin throwing bricks through Starbucks windows. You can post inflammatory hate speech against local politicians. You can rouse your followers by asking them to “reload.” You can literally target – and we mean literally, here, with maps and little target symbols and names – those who don’t subscribe to the same ideals.

You can do those things. But you can’t stagger backwards and claim you had nothing to do with the result. You can’t call for a pizza and act surprised when one shows up at your door.

Jared Loughner may be a pot smoking conspiracy theorist. He may be a kook-bird Tea Party activist gone wrong. One thing has been revealed, however: he believed in the power of words. He sought their truth. He understood their consequences.

He was led by words. He acted upon words. He killed in the name of words. He killed innocent people. He killed a child. And he did it upon the back of someone’s words.

We don’t yet know whose words.

But don’t let anyone EVER tell you that whatever they say is “only words.”

Words have meaning, damn it. Pity it keeps taking death to remind us.

Specifically, “Boolean” comes from its creator, George Boole, an English dude who, according to Wikipedia, was a sporadically published mathematician who (unbeknownst to him) just so happened to help create the field of computer science and, in death, appeared in a stained glass window at Lincoln Cathedral.

In fact, Wikipedia has several entries for Boolean, most of which I quickly became bored with. I’m more interested in how Boolean affects search – the AND/OR/NOT functions that expand and/or contract search results – and how Boolean standards have become almost second nature.

We now assume, without thinking, that double quotes mean “exact match,” a space means “AND,” and a negative sign (-) means “NOT.” The only literal Boolean phrase we use anymore is “OR.” We’ve replaced words with symbols, which is fascinating, but even more so is the fact that we have replaced one word (AND) with NOTHING AT ALL – just whitespace.

The whole mess led me to discovering two new words (NAND and XOR) and finding clarification for a third (NOR), for which I am thankful. It also led me to wish I had never made the search in the first place, as it will take me more time to learn than I am willing to invest.

I know this, though: Boolean – what a great word.

In other words, our tax returns will use the same language that we use in our everyday lives, free from governmental and legal platitudes. What a concept.

Understanding that over-technical and legal-ridden verbiage is harmful to both simplicity and comprehension, and armed with governmental action on behalf of the Plain Writing movement, shouldn’t we take a cue from this new law?

Shouldn’t we, within our power, enact our own version of this act?

The Plain and Practical Mission Statement Act.

The Understandable Utility Contract Act.

The Explaining Physics Act.

The Frequently Asked Questions that Actually Answer Frequently Asked Questions Act.

The Cut Pretentiousness From Your “About Us” Section Act.

The Filling Out Health Insurance Forms Without Screaming Act.

If we write, we’re culpable. We’re the ones who can push this change even further, until we’ve stripped away the clutter and cleave the bond between “Important” and “Overwritten.”

So it is written.

No.

No, you wouldn’t.

Your mission statement is for you. It’s for your board of directors, your senior vice presidents, your employees, your partners, your backers. It’s for your company, and your company alone.

Your mission is not for your customers. Your mission is not for your customers because your goal IS NOT TO GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU.

I don’t hate mission statements. I’ve written them. I believe in a few. I understand their place in corporate culture.

A mission statement is a framework for a company’s spirit. It’s a line or two upon which a company can balance new endeavors. Some of those new endeavors won’t stick, and that’s the point – a mission statement helps filter out the ideas that are off-brand and unnecessary. A mission statement rallies your employees and drives internal brainstorming and carves out a niche.

It’s a statement of future work.

For the most part, your audience doesn’t want methods and statements. They want answers. How will this product/service/widget affect them?

Your mission statement is not for your packaging. It’s not for your brochures and it sure as hell isn’t for your Web site.

It’s for you.

Don’t throw it on the backs of your audience.