Understanding how to write about my work is challenging my sensibilities. All of them.

While I dive head first into UX projects with delight, curiosity and at times inordinate amounts of gesturing (for example, I get visibly excited when building navigation schemes), when writing about it, I sound clinical.

Problem areas:

• I don’t own my actions, I avoid “I” statements at any cost
• I don’t use active verbs, preferring statements like “a framework was established” rather than “I create”
• When in doubt (which is about 90% of the time), I default to industry jargon I would never use if I was speaking to a living, breathing human being. Statements like “delivering customer satisfaction” does not come close to describing how I lose track of time while conducting an audit of your web property.

My husband is an avid 43 folders reader. After a conversation over breakfast this morning, he sent me a link to a post titled “Cranking”. It is a beautiful essay. It made me wonder what I do when I’m cranking.

Writing is my cranking. I approach it with resentment and a word-count in mind. I carefully consider points I *must* cover, and wonder how many times I have to re-read a sentence before I can give in and accept it. I forget that what motivates every other action in my life, is an appreciation for how it will make my life better, more interesting, more fulfilling. (This even applies to something as mundane as brushing my teeth after too much wine - having my teeth 30 years from now will make my life better, I’ve had that talk with myself).

Because my approach to writing is shit, I write shit. The beauty of this statement is that I don’t have to be a shitty writer.

In my UX work I collaborate, iterate, question, solve, re-solve all the time. This is off course how I should approach writing as well.

My very smart husband - Daniel - also suggested I take design out of the equation, and just publish what I’m writing as I’m writing it - so Tumblr it is.