Alright, maybe not. I think I was just in a dark mood last night.

If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend:

This Land on JibJab.com.

Six months ago I felt hopeful, and good.

Three months ago, I felt like I was on the right track. I took on two jobs, and hit the gym; Spring was here and I felt like love could bloom at any second.

But now, tonight, it’s pretty much official: I hate my life again.

And I can’t design websites. And I can’t draw. And I can’t play music. And I can’t write. And I can’t photograph. And I can’t get up in the morning for the consulting gigs that might actually keep me from overdrafting my bank account. And I can’t ever do anything right.

And I don’t understand it, any of it. Nothing in the world. None of it at all.

I have written, you see, one thousand entries for this site, each a shining jewel so bright, so pure, that you could never have seen them; for to see them would be to be blinded by their brilliance. Even I, their ostensible creator, cannot now gaze upon them. Nor could I when they were written; they were unadulterated emanations from the archetypical subconscious; approaches towards Plato’s pure Form of witty essay.

Think of it this way. You stand on a beach at sunset and remark upon it’s sublime beauty. But you do not see the beauty that stretches north and south along the whole sea coast, nor that beauty which has existed in the eras before and will exist for ages afterwards. You have only one place in your vision, fixed at one moment, and this one moment is like an entry that I have written here, whereas the entries I have not written are the entirety of the universe.

Seen this way you must realize that my silence has not been one of neglect, but one of appreciation. In our short lives we can only say so many words to each other. The words unsaid will always outnumber those we are lucky enough to communicate, just as the endless stars in the sky will always dwarf whatever constellation we fix our sight on. My quiet, then, has been a celebration of this infinity we share.

I’ll try to celebrate less often.

The main problem in the design of any website is to determine precisely what that website is for. Why does it exist? After this is determined, creation can proceed almost effortlessly.

Above all, you must learn to use materials honestly and simply. You must become familiar with the applied finishes and the available platings and learn how they may best contribute to the unity of your design. You must take pleasure in the warm and simple surfaces of the synthetic plastics, and not torture them with irrelevant decoration or try to make them look like onyx or mahogany. You must not design space heaters in cast iron and then grain them to look like wood.

—Harold Van Doren, Industrial Design (1954)

Read. Agreed. Applied? No. To the contrary, I put wood paneling on my website.

But now that’s gone. Now we start with the functionality, and rebuild from there.