An evening of poetry, prose and song is upon us, and As Was Written has arrived, my friends.

Tickets are $3 online, $5 at the door. The only reason we’re charging is to rent out The Lyceum in Old Town Alexandria. The venue is great, as my homeboy and yours, John Quincy Adams, once spoke there.

Yes, this is the event that replaces Words Aloud. New, refreshed line-up. Same great time.

I hope to see all of your (mostly) lovely faces there!

“It wasn’t realistic for us to be able to flip a light switch and have the light just cut on. Or, for someone to bend metal and have it be able to fly over oceans across the globe.”

Here’s a quick peek at what’s to come:

My aim for the site is to present the various web and print items I’ve produced but almost as importantly, explain the path and mindset I had throughout the process. With this, my lovely personality with shine through, of course! I like to have a good time and make people laugh around the clock, but I also take what I do seriously. Showing off my personal blend of the two — there is a piece of you within everything you produce, right? — is an important part of who I am, what I do and where I want to go in the future.

Stay tuned to my “Timfolio” Flickr set for updates down the line, just in case I don’t blab about them on here first.

In order to make progress, it’s extremely important for young designers to know where the best of the web have been and, just as importantly, where they are headed.

Cameron Moll pointed out the best example I’ve seen so far of one of the best ways to perfect your craft. He says “Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal” but what I gathered from it was not the literal “rip the code and use it as your own” copyright infringement mess we see too often on the web. Instead, find those you think are the best in the business — whatever your craft may be — and learn their style. Find out what it is that allows them to do what they do so well. Then, as you progress, break off and find your own style.

Coming from a big family, the best example I can think of is when a younger sibling looks up to an older sibling. I had one big brother I would follow around all the time, emulating his words, actions and everything. He’s left-handed, so I even tried to do that! (The parental figures were very against buying left-handed scissors, so I had to settle for being a righty) I wanted to do what he did, talk like he talked and act how he acted. I’m sure it was annoying and probably frustrating at times for him, but eventually, as I matured, I found my own style. I can tell the differences and similarities between us and it makes me smile thinking back to what it took to get here, and how much better off I am for having him to set an example.

In that sense, I’m continuing to follow those I consider the best in the business, and trying to hone in on my inner Jason Santa-Maria, Andy Clarke, Elliot Jay-Stocks and Happy Cog co-founder and web standards Don Corleone, Jeffrey Zeldman. Thanks to Twitter and these designers’ openness to sharing the processes (By way of events like An Event Apart, which I was fortunate enough to attend in June, online articles, webcasts and even detailed website design walk-throughs) up-and-coming designers are able to break into the field, even if they don’t necessarily have an art or programming degree. Some of us learned the bare bones methods in school — B.S. in Information Science right here — and get all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at content-focused designs and more sites relying heavier on information architecture and usability over flashy, quirky, looks-better-than-it-performs (that’s what she said!) wastes of space on the internets.

Speaking of Zeldman, the 3rd edition of Designing With Web Standards was just shipped off to the printers. The screenshots Jeffrey Zeldman, author and web Don Corleone, posted on his Flickr account look some kind of wonderful:

The web world is exciting right now:

• HTML5 and CSS3 are starting to be accepted in most modern browsers.
• The bible of web standards is getting a newer, webby-er edition next month.
• Innovation in web design and art direction on the web is thriving.
• Local web communities (RefreshDC is quite fantastic) keep the discussion constantly going, in an effort to keep standardistas and their sworn enemies in communication with as few e-fisticuffs as possible.

Good web design is on the rise, going mobile and getting web geeks hot super model women. (Ok, one of those is likely untrue)

I’m glad to be involved in something I’m growing even more passionate about. The web is becoming increasingly important in every walk of life.

We each have a choice: get left behind or join the cause.

I choose the latter.

The idea, originally inspired by two gentlemen from North Carolina, Jason Mott and Justin Edge, who put together their own event hosted in Wilmington, was to give aspiring writers an open forum to share their work with a literary appreciative crowd.

Fellow 804 Horseman and former UNC-Wilmington classmate of Mott and Edge, John-Mark Davidson, shared details of the Wilmington event while hanging out among friends in Old Town Alexandria. The first domino was tilted forward by a single question posed by a lovely young missus by the name of Emily Saulsgiver: “Why don’t we do that here?”

And with that, Words Aloud was born.

John-Mark and I hosted the event, as eight total readers took to the podium on March 7, 2009, for the 1st Annual Words Aloud (listed in order of appearance):

• Stuart Smith
• Nicholas Thomas
• Jason Mott
• Thadeous Goodwyn
• Emily Saulsgiver
• Justin Edge
• Timothy Hopkins
• John-Mark Davidson

Each person shared a poem, story, or topics ranging from love, old wisdom, drinking mishaps, vanity via mirrors and trysts. The crowd of 30-35 remained awake from what I could tell, and seemed to receive the original pieces quite well, making the evening even more successful than we could have hoped for.

The event would not have been possible if not for the help from a few people/places:

• Roommate John-Mark for co-hosting.
• Roommate Thad for all his help and his sonnet.
• Roommate Mike for his help and the food.
• Justin Edge and Jason Mott for coming up from Wilmington, and for the idea originally coming from them.
• Emily Saulsgiver for asking the simple question, “Why don’t we do that here?”
• T.J. for providing the microphone and mic stand.
• Jessica “Vila” LaFever and her father for building a wooden podium specifically for the event.
• The lovely crowd of friends, family and just plain folks for coming out and being receptive and appreciative.

Considering the event’s turnout, attendee feedback and the foundation of our place still remaining intact, count on there being a 2nd Words Aloud in the coming months.

Stay tuned to this website, as well as my Facebook and Twitter pages for the exact event date.

So to all participants, both readers and attendees alike, I’d like to personally say thank you kindly for helping to make Words Aloud go above and beyond our expectations!

** Here’s the piece I read [PDF] **

Topics range from autobiographies, social theory, web design, and fiction.

Here are the last few –

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

President-elect Obama writes of finding his own identity, chasing the trail left behind by the Kenyan father he met only two times. Starting the book with the news of his father’s passing away, he takes us through a journey of his upbringing, which spanned across the globe — Honolulu, Jakarta, New York, Massachusetts and eventually, on to settle into Chicago, Illinois.

The book is a raw, inner guide to the young president-elect as he tried to find his place among his peers, and in the world, as he constantly felt out of place. His stories are vivid, his travels are vast, and the in-depth revelation in Dreams from My Father is a perfect introduction to the mind of the soon-to-be President of the United States of America; his balancing of good and bad, just and unjust, black and white.

Definitely pick this up if you’re looking for insight as to what went through the mind of the man set to be The Man in a matter of days — written well before he was the iconic figure he is today.

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

As a journalist with The New York Times, Filkins is given vast resources for digging into the inner cities and towns within Afghanistan and Iraq, during their some of their most contentious times. His stories paint a raw picture of American occupation in a foreign land — Iraq mostly — and the struggle in keeping peace when embedded in areas where insurgents are scattered about, and not always easy to weed out.

Forever War talks of the struggle between Iraqi and Afghan residents coping with foreign occupation, all the while trying to keep their families out of harm from insurgents terrorizing their land. It also talks of the many risks American troops face, laying their lives on the line to bring peace in countries they are not always welcomed “with open arms.”

In this book, Filkins does not editorialize his stories. They are simply reported as they occur, and in their raw detail each one reveals the relentless spirit of the many who are trying to bring peace to these war-torn countries. In the process, we really get a glimpse of the difficulty and life-risking maneuvers a journalist like Filkins must go through in order to relay the stories from beyond borders where stories of old used to never escape.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Once again, Gladwell makes the reader put on a thinking cap and take a look into what makes a person successful. Is their success a credit to being geniuses at what they do, or is it also thanks to fortunate placement in a time or place? Outliers takes us through an in-depth look into situations where some “geniuses” are born into situations with great opportunities. The 10,000 hour rule — where to be a true and complete expert at a particular field, one would generally need to spend over 10,000 hour practicing — can only be achieved if someone like Bill Gates lives in the right area (Michigan) who gave him a unique opportunity to practice programming at a very young age. The child in the inner city single-parent home who gets chosen to attend a charter school where classes are more engaging than public schools, and because of their more intense workload, those who graduate gain a higher quality of education later in life.

Mostly, Outliers is a view into situations where it is revealed that success can be achieved through other means than being born a genius. It reveals cultural blockades that tend to occur even when it doesn’t seem immediately clear — in one instance he reveals how Korean Airlines went from being nearly shut down to becoming one of the safest airlines worldwide, all by addressing the way Korean culture traditionally communicated in the work place.

This book is a great, short read for those of you interested in finding out how some of the more conventional thoughts of success may not be entirely correct. Why did Joe X become a millionaire, and one of the best at what he does, and John Y not get beyond his initial show of intelligence, even when they both scored equally as high on aptitude tests? Was it that Joe X had more ambition than John Y? Or was it that Joe X happened to be born into the right situation where opportunities to succeed were readily available? Gladwell does not say this is the case all the time. However, he does make you ponder the endless possiblities of what less fortunate children could be if they were placed in a better situation to succeed.

Currently reading:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Using Twitter, I followed my favorite Web Designers — Jason Santa-Maria, Chris Coyer, Cameron Moll, Jeffrey Zeldman, to name a few. Their tips and links to resources on their Twitter updates and websites have been incredibly helpful in working on the craft.

Using Facebook, I found a way to keep up with hundreds of friends from both yesteryear and yesterday, from this continent all the way to the one on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thanks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I managed to compile a quite lovely book collection of all sorts of genres — from Web Design, to Non-fiction to Fiction, to literary classics to language books — for reasonable prices. (Double thanks to the family and friends who passed along books as gifts!)

Using the tips from Zen Habits, I managed to work my finances into a manageable level of order, unclutter my desk, work on the minimalist approach to Life Hacking, and set goals moving forward. (Hence, this particular post on the 2009 outlook.)

One of the tips from ZH was to make goals known outright, so those around you can help motivate and keep you in check if focus is temporarily lost. Here we are, looking into 2009 and setting a few main goals:

Write weekly. The goal is to keep up writing, even about nothing. Though Twittering is essentially a bunch of persons writing 140-character Seinfeld story plotlines, at least ideas and thoughts are expressed. Practice makes perfect, although I’m not sure where on the 10,000 practice hour scale I am on — In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, the 10,000 hour number is given as how many practice hours it takes to be a  true certifiable expert in a particular field — I do recognize repetition will help in the long-run.

Stay far, far away from credit cards. While the instant gratification of having a certain stylish, entertaining electronic devices in-hand immediately is great, there is a reason we are in the current financial crisis. Credit cards are part of the problem. Self-discipline, in spite of what the “burning desire of want” is, needs to be contained. Work on saving for necessity first, then the want-items last. Leaving the plastic cards out of the equation makes life much easier.

Increase freelancing business. Available to write, create e-marketing campaigns and websites, the work I completed in 2008 was a learning experience. Worked on invoicing and time management, coordinating deadlines with both paying and pro-bono clients. The goal here is to market better once a full portfolio site is completed. I will announce that site everywhere once it is live.

Keep reading. Last year, I read more books than ever before. In college I had a few textbooks a year and the occasional leisurely read. In 2008, I managed to skim through books with topics like: biographies, web design, marketing, literary classics, even down to the random “6 Word Memoirs” book worth mentioning because of its many great one-liners.

Keep happiness at the forefront of all things in life. Be it work, play or family, happiness is the key to prosperity. Finding what it is that makes you happy — including working at a place you enjoy — and focusing on how positive internal happiness and positive thinking translates into success is key. I have not read The Secret, though I hear its topic is essentially what those first lines just mentioned. I’ve lived by this mantra for a while, had those moments where focus was lost, but found my way back and continue to maintain smiles throughout. I recommend this for all, but this is a key goal in sustaining all of the others.

Using those goals, 2009 should be prosperous and full of joy. Through the process, I expect fun and the occasional hurdle. The biggest hurdle we tend to encounter is self. Allowing distractions to veer you off the path happens if you allow it. But good self-discipline will push you through to attaining a clear, victory-filled bigger picture.

Plenty of cheesiness in this list, but I will quote my least favorite saying and retire it from this point on: “It is what it is.” Take from this what you will, and trash the rest! But you know where I am focused at moving forward, and I appreciate any motivation and assistance through the process.

I must give kudos to the SNL folks for going to town on the disgraced Illinois governor, Rod Blagojovich, in their “Really!?!” segment on Saturday. It came off like an old “joanin’” battle back in the day when two kids would go back and forth making fun of each other. Only with Amy Poehler (one of my favorites) and Seth Meyers, it’s a double-team on a man who — if all evidence and witness accounts turn out to be true — is as disgraceful an elected official can possibly come.

Seth Meyers:

“And when Illinois politicians think you’re too corrupt, you’re too corrupt! That’s like Amy Winehouse telling you to go to rehab. Really!”

Amy Poehler:

“It’s 2008, did you not know people tap phones? Really!?! You’ve never seen a TV show or a film? When you’re doing something illegal, you need to speak in code. When I call up my weed dealer and I ask for $50 worth of circus tickets, you know what he doesn’t give me? Circus tickets!”

We hear a lot of talk about how a “carbon footprint” left behind by humans will effect the Earth in the long-term. But what about the long-term effects of charitable, selfless acts — or the lack thereof? I call this impact the philanthropic footprint because it seems just as important on the long-term well-being and survival of humanity.

(I’m thinking of a phrase that flows better than “philanthropic footprint,” so suggestions are welcome.)

Of course, until my older years it was mostly ideas and not nearly enough activity. One year I would donate old clothes to GoodWill; another, volunteering at a church event.

This year, I have done my best to step up my own philanthropic footprint by:

• Donating multiple bags of clothing to a church program providing assistance to children in Nicaragua
• Attending and donating to a breast cancer fundraising event hosted by a friend
• Participating in a charity bowling tournament, Bowling For Hope, hosted by Trevor’s Treasures, a charitable organization aimed at providing gifts to children in the long-term care section of the pediatric ward of hospitals.
• On October 15, 2008, I shamelessly promoted a few different charities aimed at stopping poverty around the world in cooperation with a great event, Blog Action Day. I can only hope next year’s event is just as successful.
• Volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen

I have tried to step up my philanthropic footprint in the world, and the best way I know how to encourage others is to make an example of myself.

Cheesy line of the day: Today is always the perfect day to begin working on your philanthropic footprint!

Yesterday, I took the day off work to join a friend and his company in volunteering at the D.C. Central Kitchen. The DCCK is an organization that makes over 4,000 meals a day to distribute among various homeless shelters and halfway houses across the district. According to their orientation leader, as well as their website, they are not just a “soup kitchen” that provides food alone:

As a community kitchen, we recycle over one ton of surplus food each day that would otherwise go to waste and turn it into 4,000 meals for the hungry in the greater Washington, DC region. Among the people preparing these meals are the students of our Culinary Job Training program; once homeless and hungry individuals themselves, these aspiring men and women are equipped with professional and life skills. DC Central Kitchen uses the existing ingredients of our society to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.

My particular group prepared items for a salad, peeling carrots, chopping up and cleaning lettuce, peeling carrots, cutting onions, chopping tomatoes, cutting up cheese squares and — oh yeah! — peeling carrots!

(As you can assume, my least favorite part involved my favorite orange vegetable! Peeling carrots down to little bits was a tedious process but well worth it in the end, of course!)

In the end, we mixed the items together and created dozens of salads we packaged up into big catering trays, set to head out shortly after we finished. We did these things under the command of a very friendly older woman who joked with us despite our inaccurate tomato-cutting, mishaps in following storage directions and overanalyzation of the most simple tasks. Most of the supervisors there were graduates of the work program offered by DCCK, many whom were homeless, incarcerated or were otherwise without work or training until the program provided it.

Many charitable organizations have the central idea correct, which is helping out those who are in need. Soup kitchens generally provide food to the homeless, but fail to take a step further and find out how they could use their program to assist in the long-term. DCCK is on the right track with their long-term connection, providing cooking, computer and career training classes throughout the year, in order to change the lives of those who could use the help.

This idea reminded me of the old Chinese proverb that holds true through time, addressing this very issue:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Blog Action Day 2008 is a day in which members of various online communities yap about a particular cause in order to raise awareness and effect change. This year’s topic is poverty.

Not sure if you know this, but… there is no insta-cure for poverty. Seriously.

But as fellow human beings who do not — or should not — take joy in the misfortune of others, the least we can do is take a moment to focus on a way to help, if we are so fortunate enough to be in a position to do so.

For my part, today I am officially scheduling a pickup of multiple bags of clothing I have been putting off for a while. If you have items you would like to donate, but are either too lazy to make the trip to a local Goodwill or Salvation Army drop-off or just don’t know where or how to do it, I will help! Shoot me an email, or give me a call (if you have the digits!) and I will help you arrange. This may not seem like much, but the saying “one persons trash is another person’s treasure” is quite true. That’s why Craigslist is so popular!

Here are some ideas of items you should think about donating:

• Shoes you’ve outgrown
  Stop clinging to those fresh pair of Nike kicks you can’t fit into without curling up your toes. Someone out there is shoeless and those relatively decent tiny toe-squeezers may brighten up their day. Just. Let. Go.
• Jerseys of players who no longer play for the same team
  In the back of many a closet lies the forgotten team members of yesteryear. I had a few of these stuck in my closet that I will never wear again. They are included in my donation stash and you and yours may want (and need) to part ways as well. Remember, your old throwback Stephen Davis Washington Redskins jersey may be junk to you, but bring joy to some other kid who has never had a jersey before in their life.
• Hats!
  Your head may have expanded through your years of education. Why not give up those that you used to love wearing, but can no longer fit? One day you’re a collector, the next a pack rat.
• Plain Old Old Clothes
  Maybe your style has changed from geek to chic. Maybe you used to wear small shirts to make you: look muscular (dudes) or chest-clinging “Angel” tees (girlies). It is time to let go. Why not donate that stuff to someone two can appreciate the retro style and/or actually fit in that extra SMedium t-shirt?

Feel free to leave a comment about other suggestions for folks to donate. Like I said, let me know if you need my help. Or, if you find a place online to donate, post it in the comment section. At any rate, let’s do our part for THE CAUSE!

To me, it is a matter of human decency. America is grand because we one of the most charitable nations of the world. I take an enormous amount of pride in that. You should too.

The economy is bleak right now and some of us are swimming in bills, but if you can do one tiny thing today to help out the life of someone else, do it!

Resources

• Blog Action Day List O’ Resources
• CharityGuide.org: How to make a difference in 15 minutes
• Change.org
• Military Order of the Purple Heart
• Salvation Army

I am also fairly certain McCain was not referring to Obama in the roundabout 2,823,892 times he used the phrase “my friends…”

(Note: That is an unofficial count. Consider the error margin: +/- 2,000,000)

Not that the two were especially heated and firing back and forth at any particular point, but the intimate, podium-less setting provided the imaginative type (I know I’m not the only one) a visual for the 1-in-1,000 chance that the town hall debate would turn into a town hall brawl.

(Ah, fisticuffs! Where would democracy be without it?)

McCain’s demeanor was as fiery and pointed as a candidate down in most every national poll should be.

Obama’s demeanor was as calm and poised as a candidate ahead in most every national poll should be.

Despite the McCain campaign implying that for the rest of the campaign it would “turn the page” on the economy and focus on Obama’s ties to various persons of controversy, the questions from the town hall debate were mainly focused on how everyday working Americans would pay their bills and be optimistic despite the current poor state of the economy.

Each candidate spared no time limit – much to the dismay of NBC moderator Tom Brokaw – to explain their key campaign talking points, no matter what the question was.

For every figurative punch, an appropriate and long-winded counterpunch followed. That was, except for when McCain would just toss in the “he’s gonna tax you!” jab as his time ran out and subject moved on.
Neither candidate seemed to blow the audience away. Each had their moments, but it barreled down to being more of the same rhetoric heard at every campaign stop in the country. (Granted, McCain did not mention William Ayers, and Obama did not mention the Keating Five scandal.) Polls and the questioners showed that the number one issue on Americans’ minds is the economy; leave your political finger-pointing and personal jabs at the door, we say.

A rather interesting moment in the debate came early when the candidates were asked to name who they would choose to be Treasury Secretary. Neither candidate gave an outright answer. Instead, McCain answered first by throwing out either a bad joke or jab: “Not you, Tom.”

I laughed at what seemed more like a joke to me. Unfortunately, the moderator did not seem to feel the same way, judging by Brokaw’s demeanor throughout the rest of the debate. At various points throughout the debate, Brokaw took time away by restating rules and time limits in an agitated tone. Of course, Brokaw was determined to keep within the rules each campaign agreed on, as was his job as moderator, but this was assuming that any two chatty politicians (redundant: politicians all seem to be chatty) would ever fully comply.

Another odd moment came when McCain answered a question from a gentleman, possibly in his early 30’s, about Americans paying for mortgages in this economy by telling him, “I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis.” It seemed like a tone parents give to their children when saying, “This is probably way too grown up for you. You’d never understand.” He may not have meant to phrase the words the way he did, but McCain came off as demeaning and very offensive.

And last, but not least, was the demotion McCain gave to Obama. At first, Obama was mocked for being a celebrity of sorts, and called “The One” by the McCain campaign. This time around, McCain brushed off Obama’s relative importance by referring to him simply as “That One,” as he gave a sideways head nod in his opponent’s general vicinity. Maybe McCain was trying to put Obama in the way old veterans do the new kid on the block, but it ended up coming off as a “grumpy old man” moment.

My own simple conclusion of this night came down to this:

The key difference between the town hall format and other campaign debates is that the candidates get a chance to be face-to-face with questions of regular, everyday Americans – you know, Joe Six Pack and whathaveyou – and delicately walk around their questions just as if they were sitting in the moderator’s seat.

After all, hockey moms, Joe Six Packs, construction workers, emergency service workers, town hall debate attendees and moderators, each only get one vote come November 4, 2008. Might as well give every voter fair and balanced treatment.