inspiration

Jeff Atwood on parenthood

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame is expecting two more kids – twin baby girls. When something like this – a baby or two on the way – happens, it doesn’t go by unnoticed. It consumes your whole mind and forces you to think and rethink everything. Jeff is an excellent writer with a trained technical brain. So it makes reading his thoughts on parenthood especially interesting – it’s a crazy mix of logic and emotions.

It’s also a history lesson. The first four years of your life. Do you remember them? What’s your earliest memory? It is fascinating watching your child claw their way up the developmental ladder from baby to toddler to child. All this stuff we take for granted, but your baby will painstakingly work their way through trial and error: eating, moving, walking, talking. Arms and legs, how the hell do they work? Turns out, we human beings are kind of amazing animals. There’s no better way to understand just how amazing humans are than the front row seat a child gives you to observe it all unfold from scratch each and every day, from literal square zero. Children give the first four years of your life back to you.

Congratulations, Jeff, and good luck with the pregnancy!

Parenting a terminally ill child

New York Times runs a story by a mother who is parenting a terminally ill child. It is, obviously, very sad, but it is also encouraging and inspirational. Whether you are a parent or not, you should read this. You’ll have a glimpse on one more perspective.

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?

Depressing? Sure. But not without wisdom, not without a profound understanding of the human experience or without hard-won lessons, forged through grief and helplessness and deeply committed love about how to be not just a mother or a father but how to be human.

Parenting advice is, by its nature, future-directed. I know. I read all the parenting magazines. During my pregnancy, I devoured every parenting guide I could find. My husband and I thought about a lot of questions they raised: will breast-feeding enhance his brain function? Will music class improve his cognitive skills? Will the right preschool help him get into the right college? I made lists. I planned and plotted and hoped. Future, future, future.

We never thought about how we might parent a child for whom there is no future.

Via Matt.

The Art Of Clean Up

I came across something absolutely stunningly awesome today – pictures from a photo book of Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli “The Art of Clean Up”. As far as I am concerned, this is the best take ever on the confrontation of the humans’ will to order and organize everything versus the chaos of nature.

See more examples here.

Hand paintings by Guido Daniele

I came across some really cool art – hand paintings by Guido Daniele. On some photos, hands are more recognizable than on the others. But that really doesn’t matter. The variety of subjects is just amazing. Check it out.

If that’s right up your alley, you might also want to check body painting in his portfolio. Some of that staff is pretty cool too. I especially liked his advertising work.

Office snapshots

The Web is full of inspiration office snapshots from the companies that care about their people – Google, Yahoo, and a few others. However, until now, I’ve never thought of finding an index of such office designs. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a location-based and company-based indexes with pictures from all such office around the world? I thought it would. And, apparently, there is such a collection already. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Office Snapshots. Have a look around the world and, for what it’s worth, don’t get too depressed about your own office. You are in the majority here.