The Deviant Quarterly Review is a real-life infographic of the hottest social media stories of the quarter. It’s curated four times annually by the awesome folks over at Social Deviant, where my friend Pavan Bapu works.

The graffiti artist, CZRPRZ, painted the mural in twenty-four hours. The timelapse video of the mural was shot by director/producer extraordinaire Yuriy Chernin.

Initially I implemented the video as a full-screen background using BigVideoJS, which includes a Flash fallback for users on older browsers. After a couple of days of analyzing the site traffic, though, I switched to plain HTML5 video – we had very few visitors on older browsers requiring Flash, and this seemed like a more lightweight way to deliver video to almost everyone without running the risk of Flash malfunction and superslow load times [plus, the BigVideo plugin added about four additional HTTP requests]. The interactive mural is written in jQuery, with a lot of CSS class-based show/hide functions. We also have a mobile fallback that urges users to view the timelapse video on Vimeo and visit again on desktop to see the interactive mural.

Some notes on the projects:
- The turnaround was superquick, and the vast majority of my time working on it was QAing for different browsers and sizes. The positioning of the hotspots on the mural is based on browser width, so I wrote media queries for a few key breakpoints where the spots were too far away from the mural elements. [Sadly, it is not set up to work in extra-large
- Chris helped me encode and optimize the video in .mp4 and .ogv formats. HTML5Rocks.com recommends also putting in a .webm file for other browsers, but we couldn’t get it encoded in time. This was the first time I had really worked with video at all, and it took a bit of testing different bitrates to get the file sizes small enough that it wouldn’t take too long to load. We used a preloader, as well, but I’m not sure if that helped the load time much.
- If I’m invited to work on future issues of Deviant Quarterly Review, I’ll probably try to integrate touch events for users on tablet devices – for this issue we were mainly aiming for desktop compatibility only, so while it’s visible on an iPad/Android tablet, the hotspots probably don’t work as we intended them.
- I’d also like to come up with a better solution for allowing mobile users to view the video in-page and interact with it in a limited capacity – if the video is displayed at 320px wide, it’s not large enough for the hotspots to be visible, let alone readable, so I’d have to come up with an alternate idea.
- Initially I planned on using Bootstrap for more responsiveness, but the media queries took care of most of that with a lot less code.
- If I’d had time, I would have liked to make a sprite for all the site images to reduce the number of HTTP calls, to see how it would have effected the load time. The vast majority of load time, though, came from loading the video itself.

This was a really fun project with some really awesome folks, and I’m honored to have been a part of it!

Division and Sacramento, Chicago, IL: 2011-2012

Also known as “the apartment downstairs from where we live now.” The night we moved in, our downstairs neighbor knocked immediately and engaged us in a game of Twenty Questions. Where were we from? How long did we live there? Were we planning on continuing to wear shoes in the house, because he could hear every step we took? Were we aware of how dangerous the neighborhood was for out-of-towners? And we weren’t worried? Okay, cool. Then he talked to us about his career as a musician. He was about to leave on an international tour with R. Kelly, but at the last minute, R. Kelly’s visa didn’t go through. Something about pedophilia, I don’t know.

We stayed there for a year and a half. It’s where we hosted the inaugural Superbowl: Chopped and Screwed Party; Friendsgiving; and many many nights of smoking, beers, music and great fun. It was also where I endured my first Chicago winter, which wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be.

The Jonathan: Cincinnati, Ohio: 2010

A two-room studio apartment I shared with Chris and Hachiko. Probably the only reason we didn’t kill each other was because I was working two jobs for the entire time I lived there. We did have three enormous closets, though, and that was a big selling point for me. The tininess of the place meant that we didn’t have guests often, but we did have folks over for a showing of “The Human Centipede” on Christmas night. [I didn't watch. I sat on the other side of the room and ate my Skyline and knitted.]

Taza Mahal: 2009-2010

Eight roommates in the space of a year, plus two cats and a little yard where they ran free. I lived in the attic room, and I had about eight square feet where I could stand up straight. I paid under $300 a month in rent and crafted a lot while watching great TV with Roommate Jacob. I used the hell out of the kitchen [and its luxurious dishwasher], making a batch of sweet potato soup almost weekly that winter. I also worked and slept a lot, to make up for the three years when I lived in New York and couldn’t get enough work or enough sleep.

Chris stayed over about 75% of the time, and when he wasn’t over, Hachi and I went to his place, an adorable two-bedroom he shared with our friend Erin. I’d wake up early and think about cooking breakfast; do a bunch of dishes; and then get annoyed and go eat at the diner around the corner.

Make stuff behave the way that people think it’s going to behave. Don’t make it look like a button or a slider or an expanding accordion section if it doesn’t actually do anything.

A corollary: everything that does the same kind of thing should look the same. All buttons styled similarly; all links styled similarly; all menu items styled similarly; all icons looking alike and actually doing something.

Instructions shouldn’t be necessary. But even so, you have no idea who the user is. Maybe your ideal user just handed his iPad to his grandma, and she doesn’t know what to do. Make sure the user can access the instructions from EVERYWHERE.

If you’re trying to sell me something, make it easy to buy without going through a separate registration process. Make the “create an account” process integrated with the checkout [so it doesn't feel like I have to go through extra steps before I get to pay for my nail polish or dog sweater or gourmet caramels]. Or let me use my Paypal/Twitter/Facebook to create an account. It’s not hard.

Error messaging matters. If someone messes up during login, don’t just tell them “An error has occurred. Please try again.” Did they mess up their password? Do they need to create an account? Is it something wrong on the back end [and therefore not their fault]? Don’t make them guess.

Test it on mobile, and make fixes where it’s necessary. Smartphones and tablets are not a joke, and they’re not going anywhere. Even if you don’t have a budget for a full mobile site, at least make sure it’s minimally functional.

Anyone who habitually makes their links target=”_blank” deserves to be lashed to death with a million wet pad thai noodles. Don’t fucking do this. If a user wanted to open all links in a new browser tab, she’d set her browser preferences to do that for her, or use the keyboard shortcut. When you make a decision like this for the user, you’re putting your own needs for pageviews and increasing average time on the site above their experience.

Obfuscating the content only gives you a short-term win. Nothing kills an experience like having to wait through an unnecessary interstitial ad before you get to the actual content, or having to close a modal that’s urging you to subscribe or buy an ebook because it’s blocking what you actually came to read. HelloBar is a great alternative to this if you want to promote a product or drive subscriptions, or you can make your own HelloBar-like overlay. Just don’t hide the content, okay?

Don’t justify your text. The web is not a newspaper, no matter how much you wish it were. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, for sure, but it makes the text significantly less readable by creating odd-sized spaces between words [and sometimes even spacing out the letters, if you haven't set a letter-spacing value in your stylesheet].

What kind of UX stuff do you notice when it’s missing?

• My dog and I both had stomach flu within 24 hours of each other. I don’t even want to talk about it.
• I went live with a huge client project that’s bigger than anything I’ve ever made before, and the anxiety…oh, the anxiety! Potential security issues, potential support issues, potential issues with users emailing me like “I actually hate everything you’ve done here.” In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that my stomach flu wasn’t partially anxiety-induced.
• While walking my dog on morning, I got locked out of my apartment for 45 minutes in sub-zero temperatures. And I had to pee. Really badly. I knocked on the gate for awhile, and then I cried. Then my face was chapped for the rest of the week from being moist in the cold.

Six things that happened this week that ruled

• I made a lot of progress on a Bootstrap project, which is my first non-work-related endeavor at responsive design. And I kind of love it. I’m trying not to use it as a crutch, and also trying not to revert to a tables-like mentality when using it, but it’s been fun.
• More responsibility at work. To me, this means that people like what I’m doing, and they’re asking me to do more of it.
• The second annual Superbowl party is on, and I’m in full-on Martha Stewart mode. Which you know I secretly love.
• I made a dentist appointment. Because my teeth are important to me.
• My taxes are 75% done.
• I got my Ipsy GlamBag. Ipsy works like Birchbox, without the ten-week waiting period for an invite. I’m trying to do better at makeup, and this has been a fun way to try new products. Also, this month’s bag came with nail polish, which you guys know I love.

Stuff I loved on the ‘net this week

• CSS Tricks on positioning. Because floats are over, y’all.
• This midcentury serving plate, please buy it for me. Thanks.
• The Billfold on depression and money.
• Labnol on better WordPress security.
• Creative confessionals.
• Simple to-do lists with KanbanFlow.

Hold on when you’re on public transit.

Look a homeless person in the eye, even if you’re telling them you can’t spare anything to give them. They’re people too. [Ditto for those folks that stand on the street and say stuff like, "Do you have a moment for gay rights/animal welfare/world hunger?" They're trying to do good work, even if they're aggressive.]

Un-schedule. Block off time to do nothing. And then really do it. Unplug. Shut off Netflix. Go interact with a person in a way that doesn’t involve a screen.

Talk to your dog or cat. You are their main source of entertainment and socialization. It’ll make them smile. [And really, who ever talks to their dog without slipping them a treat? I sure don't.]

Make the damned dental appointment. Your fifty-five-year-old self with her teeth intact will thank you.

Take the stairs.

Listen to awesome music. [Hello, SomaFM. How you doin'?]

Eat your leftovers, or make a stew.

Learn to brew a better cup of coffee or pull your own espresso shots.

Buy a bag of books at the thrift store. Literary clutter is the best kind to have around.

Moisturize.

Figure out how to hold folks accountable without losing empathy for them.

Don’t schedule a meeting if it’s not really necessary. If it’s really necessary, make it a short one, and hold it standing up.

Wait a day before saying yes to a new commitment.

Write a thank-you note to one of your teachers.

Eat or drink with someone new more often. The new PM from your office. Your downstairs neighbor with the adorable Staffordshire dog. A classmate from middle school who grew up to work in the same field as you.

Ask more questions.

Accept an apology you may not have heard. Just imagine it was said, and move the fuck on.

The future of mobile web: relevant to my work.

Hand-mixed gradient nails from Redditor GrannyRista.

Better-than-ordinary website navigation.

Plasticking your windows. I do this every year in almost every room.

How to work with black in Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign..

The Perks of Working from Home, which I’m reminded of every morning that I have to put on pants and leave my house. [Damn pants. Who needs them?]

Wanting meaningful work is not a first-world problem.. [Via Victorian-Era postcards about women’s suffrage. [Anyone who wants to make contemporary versions of these can shut up and take my money, already. Seriously. Make me a postcard satirizing "forcible and legitimate" and I will buy a dozen.]

A build-it-yourself modular dollhouse for girls interested in design and tech.

Name your layers, folks.

101 ways to make your ebook sexy [via the inimitable and awesome Sarah Von Bargen]

Fun times, y’all! How’s your week been?

A couple days after Halloween, I found this hot dog costume on clearance and knew I had to get it for Hachiko. I’m posting it publicly as my own therapeutic form of dog shaming.

You see, Sunday was my birthday, and in addition to spending it hanging out with my dog, I also went out to brunch, planning to return home to eat some strawberry-rhubarb pie I’d purchased the night before. Hachiko, though, had other ideas. I found the pie tins on the floor, and the pies completely gone. He’s never gotten on the counter like this before, but I suppose he’s like me in that he can never resist a good pie. Or several.

So, in retribution, I’m showing his belated Halloween costume to the world. The worst part of this, though, is that he doesn’t mind wearing it. Just look at him, sitting there in his Ikea chair. Smug son-of-a-bitch.

Organize your sock drawer. When you find a mateless sock, or one with a hole, cut it into a rag you can use later to clean your floor. If you’re feeling really motivated, use wire ties or rubber bands to keep them in pairs.

Play Hemingway and drink whiskey while you catch up on the novel you’re trying to write this month.

Beef up your holiday travel plans. Find something cool to do near your destination that will allow you to get away from your family for a couple hours. Your future self will thank you, no matter how much you love your relatives.

Achieve Inbox Zero, and set up some filters so that you stop getting notifications for every damned Facebook invite someone sends you.

Write a letter. On paper. With a stamp. Your recipient will love getting something that’s not asking them for money or trying to get them to sign up for something that costs money.

Back up your websites/databases/hard drives. It’s an easy hedge against awful things happening.

Invite friends over for a late-night board/card game [with drinks, natch]. My favorites: Set, Stratego, and Uno with special house rules.

BONUS: While you’re doing any of these, watch three episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix. Even if you’ve seen them all multiple times. Take a sip of your white wine spritzer every time someone says, “Her?”

Thankfully, I had the sense not to post what I wrote publicly*, less out of a desire to avoid drama and more from wanting to post a more finished piece of work. [Because posting dramatic stuff doesn't scare me that much.] Instead, I saved it in my Evernote and figured I’d come back to it later. In October 2011, the same thing happened, and while I did my best to revise, it was still pretty hateful [and still without an ending] So I’m trying again, and while my feelings on the matter have mellowed enough to write something that’s not ridiculously ugly, I’m still pretty riled up.

I lost my mom to breast cancer eleven years ago. Not long after she died, I realized that finding out you have cancer is like being a person who doesn’t like animals, but finding out that from now on, you’ll be forced to care for an [incredibly sick, poorly behaved, dirty] animal. You don’t have any choice in the matter, so you rearrange your life for something that you didn’t even want anyway; you can’t get rid of it, and nothing’s ever the same.

For me, mourning my mom started when she got sick. From day one, we had no countdown. We didn’t know if it would kill her, or how fast. So it went from being something horrifying – puckered staples across her chest, vomiting at the mere sight of food the day after a treatment, eventually being unable to walk – to something that was just there, like the stack of coupons and the cup of pens on the windowsill. It permeated all aspects of my life. She didn’t wear her wig to take a picture with me in my prom dress; her head was grey and shiny. After her surgery, she could only wear button-front blouses, because she couldn’t lift her arm to put on a t-shirt. I was in a unique position among my peers in that I couldn’t sneak in after curfew, because she slept in the living room, right by the front door: the radiation treatment had affected her balance so that she couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without extreme vertigo.

By the time she passed on, we all knew it was going to happen, and we’d spent all our feelings on the matter a long time ago. It was just a matter of waiting.

Mourning’s a funny thing, though. Because most of the time, I feel like I’m done with it. I’ve accepted the fact that she’s gone, having moved through denial, anger, fear, and bargaining, and finally acceptance. But every October, though, when the breast cancer awareness activity ramps up, I revert to anger. I think at this point, it might just be something that happens to me every year, the way that some people get really into fitness at the new year, or get really depressed when the days start getting shorter.

I almost feel like based on what I saw my mom go through, I have an obligation to get involved with prevention efforts in her honor and memory, so that eventually no one loses their mom like I lost mine. But a lot of stuff about the breast cancer awareness movement would have to change, and I don’t think it’s going to.

We’d have to stop talking about breast cancer in particular. Because lung cancer sucks too, and so does AIDS, and so do a lot of other things. I don’t mean to trivialize breast cancer, but I think focusing narrowly on this particular disease ignores a lot of suffering that we could help.

We’d also have to stop talking about awareness and start talking about action. Forget about Facebook memes; how about someone works with me to write a ZocDoc plugin that allows people to book mammograms online in one step? Or, let’s do it one better – general preventive care, since we’re not just talking about breast cancer anymore? **

And finally, at some point, we’d have to stop buying garbage with pink ribbons. Because it doesn’t help, and often is carcinogenic in the first place. Which just makes it uglier to me.

*Except for one very bitter tweet around that time, which went something like “Posting on Facebook about breast cancer isn’t going to bring my mom back. So how about you shut the fuck up and do something real with your efforts, hmm?”

**Seriously, let’s get in on this. I love Zocdoc and I think it could be a really cool way to encourage people to get better, more regular preventive care, and with health care reform mandating that insurance companies have to provide it for free, it’s going to be a lot easier to be healthier.

When I was growing up, my dad was big on routines. This only intensified after he retired from full-time work and started doing more private teaching and volunteering. Every night he would lay out his clothes, set the table for breakfast, and get his stuff ready for the next day [usually immediately preceeding him putting on his pajamas at 7:30 p.m. and watching the game].

He always encouraged me to try to do the same thing – get my books together for school, finish my homework before dinner, lay out my clothes after I checked the weather – but I thought it was super-lame. I wanted to be spontaneous! After all, how was I supposed to know what I wanted to wear the night before I wanted to wear it? The fact that I was perpetually forgetting my leotard at home, or hardly ever had time to eat a proper breakfast, didn’t matter to me – I wasn’t hearing this crazy talk about “routines” and “prepping in advance.” [Plus, my tendency toward excessive organization didn't manifest until my mid-to-late teens. That's when the listmaking really started getting out of hand.]

Now that I’m working all the time at my new gig and still maintaining an active freelance practice, I’ve had to retool a lot of the routines I developed during my year and a half or so of full-time work at home [namely, I have to put on pants of the non-yoga variety]. I’ve got stuff I do in the mornings, stuff I do after work, and stuff I [usually] do before bed, plus a whole other set of stuff to do on Sunday nights.

Why I like it

All the stuff that I don’t like doing or always forget to do is built into a time-based habit, so after I get into the habit, I don’t have to self-motivate every time I did it. This sounds dumb, but here are some ways it works for me:
- going over my finances [this has a dual motive: I go over money stuff on Sunday nights, and not only does it force me to evaluate where I am each week, it also gives me an incentive not to stew about money and mess around with Mint.com for the rest of the week]
- laying out stuff that I used to have a tendency to forget the night before [phone charger; snack]
- taking a vitamin [i lay it out w/ my breakfast settting]
This means that less of my stuff is left to chance.

It’s easy for me to know how much work I can take on, because I have a finite amount of time to deal with it. It’s always tempting for me to say an enthusiastic “YES!” to every work responsibility and freelance project and favor that comes my way, because I love doing what I do. However, if I did that, I’d be at risk of serious burnout within a few short weeks. As a result, I’ve built my schedule so that I’ve got specific time periods that I work on freelance work, and I try superhard not to take on more work than can fit into those blocks, lest everything suffer. This is also useful in helping me estimate when things will be done – if I have a WordPress install + theme customization for a client, I can say without even looking at my schedule that I’ll have it done in two to three weeks.

It’s easy for me to know when I’m emphatically not supposed to be working. The schedule pretty much the same from week to week, and I tend to work on the same things at the same time each week. This means I know that at 3 p.m. on Sunday, I have to be done for the weekend, even if I’ve still got other work I could be doing. Another way for me to avoid burnout. Sometimes I get creeping guilt when I’m not working, but we talked about this before – all work and no play makes Amanda Lee a dull girl [who writes crappy markup, eats too much garbage trying to stay awake, gets snippy with her friends, and eventually falls asleep while sitting at her desk].

I have time built in for screwing up. My schedule used to be completely full to the brim of stuff that I wanted to be doing, because I was intent on packing it with as much gym time/work/hobbies as possible. I don’t do that anymore. I specifically stop working at a given time, and I’ve tried really hard lately to get rid of the habit of joining things or picking up new hobbies. This way, if I have an honest-to-gawd legitimate emergency [of the hospital-visiting/dog-vomiting/car-breaking-down variety/server-hacking variety], I can deal with it without completely mucking up the rest of my week’s work.

I’m taking better care of myself. Yeah, I still oversleep and eat at Dunkin’ Donuts sometimes, and work-related urgencies get my pulse racing. But in general, I’m eating better and exercising more than I’ve ever been able to with a full-time job. Which is progress, I think.

I’m working on a cool infographic-y poster of my weekly routines. I’ll get it up here next week.

In the meantime, what kinds of stuff do you do every day/week/month/weekend? Or what kinds of routines/habits do you wish you had?

Lifehacker types love to talk about time management because it’s important, and I’m not going to argue about that. But I’m learning that I’ve got another limitation that’s possibly even greater – limited attention.

I’m not talking about ADHD, which I quite possibly also have. [Fun fact: I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, but my mom didn't want me to be medicated for it. I still never have been, though I fantasize about how much more I could get done if I were.]

What I mean is, I have on average seven or eight hours every day that I can focus and produce good, usable markup or creative work. This is broken into smaller chunks, obviously, and I take a lot of breaks. [And seven hours is an average - I usually work a bit more on the weekdays, and significantly less on the weekends, or sometimes not at all.]

I can push myself and buckle down for longer periods, of course. But after a certain point, or if I do it repeatedly for a lot of days in a row, I notice two things:
1) The quality of my work decreases. I start making stupid mistakes that I wouldn’t have made two years ago. Sometimes I look over a previous day’s work when I’ve done this and I have to scrap most of it, or I just put my head on my desk and go, “What the hell was I thinking?”
2) It is much, much harder for me to focus on one thing at a time. I get antsy and start taking unnecessary breaks to do nothing at all, or I somehow think it’s a good idea to watch The West Wing while I write, and end up transcribing Sam Seaborn’s lines by accident. Before long I’ve abandoned work completely and spent close to an hour looking at dogs to adopt on Petfinder.

What’s more, if I do push myself to go beyond this limit for more than a few days at a time, I find it harder to work the following few days. I imagine it’s similar to pushing yourself really hard to complete a race without eating more calories – you end up depleted and sleep a bunch the next few days.

For me, then, I’m finding that attention is a limited resource. I am constantly working to get better at it. I started doing Pomodoro a couple years ago, and when I began, it was difficult for me to focus on only one thing for five minutes at a time. Obviously I’m much better now, but it’s still a process.

This is part of the reason why quitting Etsy, in retrospect, was such an important thing to do. And given my new job, I’m thinking a lot about the ways I want to spend my off time. I’m still taking on freelance work, but at a significantly reduced volume – I’m making it pretty clear to clients that, no, I probably can’t get it done before next weekend [because if I try I'm going to end up in bed for the week following].

So, yeah, I’m becoming a quitter. But the thing about it is that it’s allowing me to become better at the stuff I’m not quitting. Which I’m actually kind of psyched about.

Later this week I’m going to post about my routines. Because like lists and charts, I love things that can be quantified. And also, because my routines directly affect my attention and my ability to do decent work.

The very first Etsy project I did was a joint shop with my friend Katherine. We opened I Love Life I Love You together in around 2008, when we were going to sell handmade and vintage goods, from Brooklyn and San Francisco with love. When we both got busy with work and life, we left it behind.

I picked it up again in late 2009, when I was living in Cincinnati and trying to earn extra money to pay down debt. I spent a lot of my free time knitting, so selling my knitwear on Etsy seemed like a good idea. During the second iteration of my Etsy tenure, I sold a few hats, and also did some craft fairs and sold on consignment through a couple of local shops in Cincinnati. I intended to continue after I moved to Chicago – after all, Chicago’s freezing! You need a hat every day from September through May!

But when I got busy with work, it fell by the wayside. And I’m kind of glad.

Would I do it again? Maybe.

But would I try to dissuade other people from doing it? Not at all. For the amount of time I put in and for the scale of the business I was running, I don’t consider it a failure. I learned a ton about the nuts and bolts of running a business, which are all valid lessons that I apply every day working as a freelance web developer.

- Your portfolio matters. I had a website, but I never did much with it, and I never promoted it a single time. The work that I put up for sale on Etsy was great, though, for showing people what I was capable of making. I tried to have a few examples of every kind of thing I could make, so that when people asked about whether I could make something they wanted, I could point to a link and say, “Sure. Here’s one like that I made already. So you want this in pink with a pompom on top?” Now that I’m focusing solely on development, I do my best to figure out new projects that I can do to show off my skills: “Oh, a form validator? Cool. I built one last week.”

- You get nothing you don’t ask for. I put up a ton of stuff on Etsy for sale, and I made maybe four sales total. Which is super-low.

But I had a lot better success working with local shop owners who carried my knitwear, making custom hats for people I knew, and selling at craft fairs than I EVER did selling directly to customers on Etsy – by a factor of several hundred percent. Each time I made a sale that wasn’t via Etsy, it was the result of me telling people what I had to offer, and asking if they needed any knitwear. I try to make a habit of doing that regularly as a developer too – asking for referrals and showing people the new things I’m working on.

- Scale matters, and so does pricing. I did the math on this, and every hat I made had a profit margin of like, $5 when I accounted for labor and materials costs [paying myself minimum wage]. If I’d been more successful, I would have hit a ceiling of how much I could actually produce. And of course, the maximum that people were willing to pay for a hat like I made was not very much higher than the price I was charging. A smarter businessperson than me would have figured out how to move into other areas with higher profit margins [my guesses would be babywear, themed stuffed plush toys like knitted Angry Birds, pet accessories, knitted wedding dresses] or at least into different product types that would allow for machine-based knitting [sweaters, home textiles like bedspreads or pillows], but I never really got there.

As a freelancer, I keep this in mind all the time. I have about seven hours each day that I can reasonably work without distraction, exhaustion, or burnout; so I have to be aware when I’m taking projects that will be particularly time-consuming or resource-intensive – and charge accordingly.

- Jumping in feet-first is awesome. I’m proud of the fact that I decided to do this, and then within a couple of weeks I had my storefront set up. Later on, I took better photos of my products and started thinking about promotion and new product development, but I started it up fairly quickly.

This is definitely relevant for a freelancer of any kind, but especially for designers and developers. I regularly admit that there’s a TON I don’t know about development – I can’t do much at all on the server side; Photoshop sometimes makes me want to throw things; and I struggle with looking at other people’s jQuery scripts that aren’t commented and tabbed and properly documented. [Side note: Seriously, if you write a plugin, I would love to help you write documentation on how to use it. Get in touch with me.] Web development is a rabbit hole, and it would have been easy for me to throw my hands up and go, “I can’t do this! I need to learn so much more stuff!” But most of the projects I’ve taken didn’t require anything I didn’t already know, so I’m glad I didn’t count myself out for those projects before I even got started on them.

- But researching the market before jumping in is crucial. I recently learned that out of everything sold on Etsy, knitwear is a relatively poor seller. Also, in general, a lot of people that try it don’t do so well, and even if they do, their scale is limited by the constraints Etsy imposes: namely, that everything sold on the platform has to be handmade by the seller.

So as a developer, I’m constantly coming up with cool ideas for projects to pitch to people – a mobile site for finding the nearest coffee shop, where the site actually looks like a cup of coffee! Or a collaborative website with nonprofits and medical centers where women can book a mammogram online! But as cool as these ideas are, I have to think about whether they’re going to be useful to anyone. [After all, Yelp and ZocDoc already exist, and they do a damn good job.]

- Figure out how to expand, and be smart about it. One thing that I never did, but probably should have, was to put together a series of knitting lessons. I could have put them on Youtube, and then charged an hourly rate for in-person or Skype lessons – maybe even put together a party package for crafty bachelorette parties or something, I don’t know. [True story: One of my craftier friends just got married, and I'm 99% sure she would have gone for this.] Or, instead of selling to people that needed hats, I could have written up my patterns into a pretty PDF and sold them as downloads for a couple bucks.

I haven’t gotten to the point in my web design that I’m developing products, but I know the option is there, and there are a lot of people who do really well with them – selling custom WordPress or Drupal themes via a theme marketplace, building apps to sell in the Play store, developing analytics/SEO packages. So it’s in the back of my mind as a “someday” project.

- Quit while you’re ahead. I could have kept going, but early last year I started actively pursuing more freelance clients in web design and development, which was more time-consuming, but also way more lucrative and fulfilling on a personal level. It wasn’t an active choice, per se. But I wasn’t into it anymore, even independent of my Etsy shop – knitting had become more of a chore than a recreational activity, and I started having problems with my elbows and my right shoulder from spending hours working on merchandise. So it seemed like a better choice to let it go and focus on where my web development and design career was going.

Have you guys ever sold on Etsy? What did you think?

This is a thought pattern I’m still trying to break. It’s hard, because you wouldn’t believe how often I hear adults who are several years out of school talk about their test scores or their GPAs. Few things compare to the universality of these numbers – nearly everyone remembers their scores and their grades. Some people took their SATs multiple times. ²

There are other, more common measuring sticks that grown-ass ladies and gentlemen regularly use to measure their success. Salary. Dress size [sometimes relative to the dress size you wore in college]. Calories burned. Square footage of your house, garage not included. How little we slept last night [because the amount we sleep is inversely proportional to our importance].

The Internet isn’t exempt, either. In fact, it might be worse, because we have so many ways to measure everything – ways that can be refreshed constantly and cost us nearly nothing. Blog hits. Comments left. Retweets. Friends, +1s, likes. Ad revenue. Subscribers, clickthroughs, forwards, CPM.

I want to stop measuring the easy stuff and start measuring the important stuff. I’m not sure what these actual metrics will be yet, though.

For you, though, what are your personal yardsticks? How can you tell, quantifiably, whether you’re doing a good job with what you’re doing?

¹I’m not going to tell you my standardized test scores, because that would defeat the purpose. But for the record, I studied very hard for them. I think this might have had less to do with raw intelligence or desire to do well and more to do with the feeling of virtue I got from sitting around in coffee shops surrounded by half a dozen SAT practice manuals when I knew my classmates might be doing something other than studying. And, honestly, those logical reasoning problems weren’t going to solve themselves.

² Strangely, I’ve fallen in lately with a bunch of graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and they never bring this up. I did some digging and discovered it’s because their classes are all graded on a pass-fail basis. Lucky bastards.

Full disclosure: Before I moved to New York two years ago, I wore heels all the time. I’d had the same three pairs of black heels for the past two years, and I loved wearing them out—to work, on dates, to the grocery store (okay, maybe not so much).

When I got to New York, though, I quickly learned that living in a car-centric city in the midwest was way, way more high heel-friendly than living in a large, public transit-oriented city during which my commute was upwards of forty minutes a day (and often spent standing the entire way). I was staunchly (stupidly?) opposed to changing my personal style for mere functionality, though. As a result, I had a brief period of bloody feet, blisters, limping, and constant trips to the drugstore to purchase Band-Aids for my aching tootsies—as well as a shock when I walked through the soles of two of my favorite pairs of heels. It took me awhile to learn what I needed to do in order to wear heels in the city without dying from pain or developing severe foot deformities. But since I did, I’ve stayed ahead of the curve and can sport sexy shoes with the best of them.

(No, seriously: My good friend Mark saw me in flats for the first time in the year and a half that I’ve known him, and he was shocked that a) I wear heels as often as I do without developing serious foot problems, and b) I’m actually shorter than he is. He had no idea because he always saw me in heels!)

Tonight I’m going to share with you everything I’ve ever learned about tolerating heels in a large, pedestrian-oriented city. With a few quick precautions, you’ll be able to wear glamorous shoes all the time without risking soreness, injury, or scuffed-up shoes. Read on!

• Make sure your shoes fit. Know your size, and don’t buy outside of it. Don’t try to squeeze into a smaller one just because they don’t have your size—you’ll be headed to blisterville and might even develop heel spurs or plantar fasciitis (nasty and painful!). And wearing shoes that are too large for you will mean long days of faceplanting in the street whenever your feet slip inside them. This is a huge temptation when you’re a seven and you find the perfect pair of vintage boots in a six and a half, or when that pair of Jimmy Choos on sale is too narrow for your prominent tailor bunion. But don’t be tempted. You’ll merely end up miserable, and not only will you be unable to return them to the store, you might endure enough pain to swear off heels forever. It’s worth noting, also, that every brand and style fits differently. So, don’t buy shoes without trying them on. (Come on, do you ever buy a piece of clothing without trying it on? If so, shame on you! You should stop now!)It’s also worth noting that your feet can change size. Your feet swell as the day goes on, so some people end up wearing a full half size bigger in the evening than they do in the morning. (This is why it’s smart to go shoe shopping in the evening rather than the morning!) Also, heat and cold can cause your feet to expand or contract seasonally—I definitely have a pair of amazing vintage white cowboy boots that I can’t fit into during the summer, because my feet are too big! Finally, events like injury or even pregnancy can cause your feet to change size or shape—so beware! Always try your shoes on before buying. You’ll thank me.
• Take care of the shoes themselves. Inspect your heels often. If you’re like me, the little rubber tips at the bottom of the heels will wear off over time, exposing the metal posts in the heel (called the taps). When this happens, take them to the cobbler right away and get them replaced—if you don’t, you risk ruining the whole heel of the shoe and marking up the leather. Likewise, check the sole for excessive wear, and the heels for instability—you can have both fixed. If they’re real leather, clean and polish them often, especially after they’ve gotten particularly dirty—this will keep the leather in good shape for a long time, ensuring against cracking, peeling, or excessive scuffing. And finally, wear the correct size! If you wear shoes that are the wrong size, they’re going to wear out more quickly!
• Buy good shoes. This pains me. But it’s the truth. If you continually buy poor-quality shoes, you’re paying for badly-constructed, thin-soled, ill-fitting, weak-heeled shoes. So stop. If you’re on a budget, save for one or two good pairs of versatile heels rather than ten pairs of cheap ones. If you have an addiction and require a constant influx of new shoes, frequent the discount stores like Daffy’s and T.J. Maxx, as well as discount online shops like 6pm.com (this is the overstock site for Zappos)—they’ll cure what ails you.
• Take care of your feet. Clip your nails and file them down–sharp corners can dig and cause blisters. Also, if your feet sweat a lot, coat them with a little bit of baby powder before you put your shoes or stockings on, or wear those teeny pantyhose-like socks inside your shoes if you think it’ll help. Soak sore feet in a warm tub of Epsom salt (which I recommend for any kind of muscle soreness!), and it goes without saying that if your feet are injured, DON’T WEAR HEELS, damn it.
• Break them in. Wear them around your house while you do some lightweight chores, or while you’re having some friends over for tea. They’ll mold to your feet, and if they start hurting you, it’s easy to kick them off and go barefoot for awhile (as compared to, say, on the subway—come on, do you really want to put your bare feet on that nasty subway floor?!)
• Know how your feet behave and anticipate any rubbing that you know is going to happen. I personally have little bumps on my heels left over from years of squeezing my feet into pointe shoes. As a result, this is the first place I get blisters—so as a result, I habitually bandage my heels with clear adhesive tape or Band-Aids before I step into my pumps. If your toes habitually crunch and rub blisters on one another, try a set of toe spacers—I used these when I did ballet, and they’re great for stopping blisters on the sides of your toes. Keep in mind, though, that some of these issues are merely caused by poorly-fitting shoes, so I repeat: don’t wear shoes that don’t fit you!
• Don’t wear heels seven days a week. No matter how well they fit and how diligently you take care of your feet, heels are kinda bad for you. If you wear them all the time, you’re just asking for chronic problems with your ankles, knees, and back. Plus, you’re much more likely to sustain acute injuries while you’re wearing them—sprains, strains, and fractures, as well as trips and falls that can make you skin your hands and knees like a schoolgirl. Give yourself a break—designate every other day or every third day as a heels-wearing day, but the rest of the time, opt for ballet flats, oxfords, or flat boots.
• Don’t commute in heels.It’s one thing to wear your amazing peep-toe t-straps all day when you’re sitting at your desk or padding around the carpeted office. It’s quite another to wear them for your six-block walk to the subway and your five-block walk from the subway to your house. So don’t. The same goes for going out—wear your killer gladiator heels at the bar, but tuck a pair of cute, comfy flats into your bag for the tipsy train ride home. (Plus, let’s be honest: If you change out of your heels during a long night of drinking, who’s going to know? Everyone around you will likely be drinking too. And you might save yourself some trouble—drunk walking in heels can result in injuries and severely distressed-looking shoes. Trust me.)
• Do your best not to wear heels in rain, snow, or ice. I know this isn’t always possible to predict, but use some common sense. If it looks like rain, bring an umbrella and flats. Or, better yet, wear boots and change your shoes when you get where you’re going.
• Learn to walk in them properly. Having been a dancer, I am one of the rare breed that can run in heels. Walking on my toes is natural to me, so it’s no feat of strength. However, if you’re not like me, you should watch this video. It instructions you on how to walk in heels confidently and safely, and I really can’t do any better than that.
• Bring band-aids, invest in some Epsom salt soak, and have a drink. Because, at the end of the day, there’s nothing you can do to make heels one hundred percent comfy one hundred percent of the time. So do your best, but be aware that it can all go awry.

Do you guys have any really harrowing heel-wearing experiences? Or, how do you make heels more comfy and practical?

The biggest difference between networking and hanging out is that you can hang out with someone without an agenda, but when people network, it’s almost obvious that they always have one. And that’s where the typical skeeze factor comes in. It’s common to feel like the person who’s talking to you only cares whether you can hire him or point him in the direction of a new job.

So I’m going to tell you about what I’ve learned about how to attend a networking event without the implicit “What have you done for me lately?” attitude.

Show up with business cards. Assume you’re going to meet at least five neat people at your networking event. Now assume you want to get their card without giving them one of your own. Super-weird, right?

So getcha some. Here you go – under thirty bucks [that's not an affiliate link, dudes...'cause I love you that much]. They don’t have to be glittery, holographic, or interactive. They just have to tell people how to get hold of you. True story: I had signed up for a networking event and ordered new business cards, but they didn’t arrive in time. So instead of showing up without them, I went to work with some cardstock and a fancy pen. My handmade cards were definitely less professional than the cards that I eventually got, but more than one person I met that night became a client of mine.

Always have something to ask. If you don’t, the conversation will dry up after a few minutes, and then you have a few awful, awkward moments that are really hard to recover from. How long have they been doing what they do now? Do they like their coworkers? How do they choose to spend their time outside of work? In fact, this brings me to my next point…

Talk about non-work stuff too. Some people might be sort of uncomfortable bringing this up, but I say go for it. Yeah, we’re probably all at the event to find work opportunities, but at the end of the day, we’re all people, and knowing something about others besides what they do for money makes it all more interesting. These are the moments when you learn that the insurance salesman has a running hobby and he’s completed three marathons in the last year, or the graphic designer runs a music blog that puts out an awesome monthly mixtape. [Pro tip: Alex Franzen wrote an awesome article on stuff to ask people that isn't "So, what do you do?". Read it. Use it. It's awesome.]

Shut the @#$& up. Extroverts get a bad rap for wanting to talk about themselves all the time, but honestly, everyone does it. Introverts included. A person who’s capable of shutting up and letting others talk is so rare that people automatically perceive them as smarter, less impulsive, and more responsible. So ask your thoughtful questions, and then shut your face. If you learn to do it well, you’ll be allowing your new acquaintance to do what everyone loves to do best – talk about themselves.

Actually listen. Shutting up isn’t enough. Actually take note of things that they’re saying. Oh, they went to Xavier? Cool. Did they see the proverbial Big Game? Oh, what’s that? They’re interested in education policy? Awesome. My dad was an educator for thirty years. Maybe he knows someone that does policy work and we can put them in touch. [Psst: I wrote an awesome post about how to be a better listener. Revisit, if necessary.]

Save the soundbites for the elevator speeches. Talk like a real person. There’s a lot to be said for taking your work seriously and being able to discuss it in a professional way, but way too many people confuse “sounding professional” with “sounding like a robot”. When people ask me what I do, I never say anything about “custom small business solutions for maximizing reach in the digital sphere.” What I say is: “I help small businesses, nonprofits, and individuals share their awesome work with the entire Internet.” It’s a little unspecific, but it sounds like the way I actually talk, so I feel a lot less uncomfortable saying it. If someone’s interested in learning more about the specifics, I can go into more detail. Or ask about projects they’re doing where I might be able to help.

Make an exit gracefully. Sometimes your social anxiety gets the best of you, or maybe you just don’t want to hear an MLM pitch or a business plan about how someone can help you “revolutionize” social media for your small business [because it's not 2007 anymore, and you're already on Twitter, thankyouverymuch]. Whatever the case, you have to get out of there. So, duck out saying you think you see your coworker across the room – imagine that! Or, go refill your wine glass. [Because drinking more eases any awkward situation.]

Follow up like you mean it. After you attend networking events and exchange cards, you’ll probably get a spate of generic “Hi, it was really nice to meet you” emails from people you may or may not hear from ever again. Don’t send emails like this. Instead, find something unique to say. Forward them an article that you think might be interesting for them. Send them an invite to a cool, relevant event coming up. If you know someone in their field, ask if they’d like to be introduced. And actually respond if they write back. [Pro tip: Peter Shankman wrote a great post on not being full of shit. Part of it involves regular daily check-ins with your contacts. He's got a fishbowl full of business cards from people he's met, and every day he fishes out a few and writes a "Hey, what's up?" letter. Do this. Really.]

Have you been to any networking events? Any awesome/horrific/hilarious stories? What’s worked for you?

Our friend Mike Lopez made this tiny crocheted hat for Chris.


The zebra mask is an old favorite. It lives somewhat creepily in our bathroom above the toilet.


This is Lindsay Lohan’s mug shot. Katrina got it as a bonus gift when she ordered something from Etsy a few years ago, and she gave it to us.

What’s on your walls?

However, I love reading about behavior change. So here’s some good stuff to fill your Sunday.

Here’s a list of the most common New Year’s Resolutions for Americans, and ways you can make them happen a little easier.

Thirteen fresh starts for your new year – vintage Sarah Von at her finest.

Celebrate it whenever you want to and whenever it works best for you, because New Year’s is arbitrary.

How do you create resolutions when your life is about to change?

Michelle is brilliant. Go read this: How to make your habits stick using anchor habits.

If your resolution is to get a better education, start here. [I did one of Stanford's open courses last semester, and this year I'm hoping to do a couple more. Awesome stuff, and completely gratis.]

50 Radical Resolutions from the lovely Ashe Mischief.

For freelancers and solopreneurs: stuff you should measure at the year’s end to make sure you’re doing awesome work and to set your goals for next year.

One from my own archives: Stuff I wanted to stop doing at the start of 2009. [After I posted that, I quit my not-so-great-paying job, moved to another state to go to school, and then got a better job instead, even without school. I also ditched a not-so-great boyfriend and got an amazing/supportive/hilarious one. Funny how that works!]

What are your resolutions? What are you doing to make them reality this year?

This is the first logo design that I’ve done that wasn’t super-cutesy and hand-drawn first. The typeface is one of my favorites from the League of Movable Type, and the symbol on the left was Jeremy’s own creation. I’m pleased with how it turned out! Do you all like it?

[A note on Deeper Context: The entire site is still in progress, but seriously, hire this dude. He'll do brilliant work for you.]

Last weekend was a long weekend—woohoo! Normally I would have spent a day at the beach with friends, or maybe taken a train somewhere fun, but last weekend’s skimboarding adventure left me sunburned and hence unwilling to leave my apartment for long while the sun was out. So, instead of attending a barbecue or a party, I did some wardrobe maintenance.

Given my fixation with collecting fashionable items, particularly vintage clothing in perfect condition, I was a little overdue for a wardrobe pare-down. Luckily, one of my other fixations involves evaluating whether the possessions I own are actually bringing any value to my life, so my closet decluttering extravaganza occurs a couple times a year, typically when the seasons change from warm to cold and then back again. I’ve streamlined a cleaning process that works for me. Here are the steps I take, including some suggestions for modification.

• Gather the right materials. You’re going to be trying on lots of clothing, so be prepared. I make sure I have seamless undies, a couple of different bras in different styles, a slip and a half-slip, and heels in a few different heights, but if you don’t wear any of these things in real life, you can alter this list to fit the underthings and shoes that you actually own and use). In addition, you’ll need a full-length mirror; a fashionable friend (or ten!); and a plastic storage box. (What size? It depends. Read on.)
• Take everything out of the closet that you haven’t worn in a year. This is the beginning of your “no” pile, as in, “No, I’m not keeping this” (or, more pointedly, “Hell, no, I’m not wearing sequins anytime in the foreseeable future!” or “Why in Bertrand Russell’s name did I ever buy those sparkly leggings in the first place?”). If you haven’t worn it in a year, you’re likely not ever going to wear it again, if you ever did in the first place. So why not get rid of it to make space for something else that you’ll wear more often? Some professional organizers say you should take out everything that hasn’t been worn in the past six months, but I like to give myself a year to account for climate variance. If I followed this rule, I’d clean out my closet every springtime and routinely give away all my sundresses that I hadn’t worn all winter. . . and then come summer, I’d be kicking myself in the ass for doing this.
• Let the fittings begin! Try on every piece in your closet. I like to try all my clothing exactly like I would wear it out—combined into outfits, and paired with reasonable underwear (if you’re trying to decide whether to keep that black sheer skirt, wearing pale pink granny undies doesn’t exactly make for an objective decisionmaking situation). This way, I get a better idea of how it will actually look when I wear it out. I check for four things: whether it fits; whether I like it or whether it fits in with my own style aesthetic; whether it’s in good repair; and whether it fits with my lifestyle. The fit is usually the easiest thing to determine; even though I’m done growing and my weight doesn’t really fluctuate, some of my clothing shrinks in the wash or stretches out as it gets old. This leads to skinny jeans that are way skinnier than I am and tees that don’t clear the waist of my pants, so those are easiest to put into the “no” pile. The question of whether it fits with my style aesthetic is usually pretty easy as well; if I find myself doing a lot of freelance work in offices where business attire is the norm, it would make sense that I’d want to get rid of more tees and keep more blouses. The question of lifestyle, however, is the hardest for me—mostly because I sometimes own things on the basis of their aesthetic merits, but never have anywhere to wear them. Vintage cocktail dresses are at fault here, as well as too many pairs of track pants (I don’t go running nearly often enough to own more that two athletic outfits total).

  After you try each item on, you’re going to put it in one of three piles. You already have a “no” pile from above; the other piles are “yes” and “maybe.”

• Get fixing. While you’re doing this, keep two running lists. The first is the items that you own and plan on keeping, but that aren’t in great repair or need alterations. When I did my cleanout last weekend, my list included sewing on buttons, replacing broken zippers, fixing torn seams, hemming some floor-length gowns up to cocktail length so I can wear them more often, shortening sleeves, and putting in darts to nip in the waists of some dresses I’d typically worn with belts to cinch them. I plan on doing the majority of these alterations myself, but if you’re not skilled in sewing, you can usually have a tailor do them for you for a reasonable price. The second list you’re going to keep is a list of things you need to purchase. I know it seems counterintuitive that the result of cleaning out your closet is going out and buying more stuff, but you’re not just going to buy crap. Maybe you have a dress that would look way better with a big patent leather belt over it. Maybe some of your summer sundresses can become four-season dresses with the help of some coordinated turtlenecks and solid tights. Maybe the only thing stopping you from wearing your amazing wool skirt three times weekly is the fact that you don’t have a blouse that goes with it. Or, maybe you’ve had your black tee since before you hit puberty, and it’s been through the wash more times than you’ve been on the Internet since birth. . . in this case, you should get rid of it, and buy a new one (or two, if you wear it more than once a week). Keep in mind, though, that this is not complete carte blanche to buy whatever you want; look for things that will add value to what you have already.
• Deal with the “maybe” pile. This is where your friend comes in. If it’s a particularly stylish friend or even a group of friends, all the better. You need opinions—harsh ones. So invite over all the fashionistas you know and start trying on your “maybes” with an audience. Your fashion-forward friends who know your style are your most indispensable asset. Because they’re familiar with your tastes and your lifestyle, they’ll be able to give you the most accurate suggestions about what looks good and what doesn’t. But what’s more, they’ll be able to make suggestions as to how you can possibly make it work. (Case in point: I never wear tube tops, but I have a couple of vintage wrap skirts in different colors and prints. My friend Leigh watched me complain about not wearing them enough because they don’t look good with any of my tops, and she suggested, “Why don’t you wear them with a tube top?”) Remember the shopping list from above? You’ll likely be adding to it here.
• Take the “no” pile and shove it. . . Seriously. Get rid of that stuff now. If you have trouble getting rid of your old things, just think: there’s a reason you don’t wear them anymore. You don’t need a prom dress more than a few times in your life, even if you’re Greek in college and attend formals on a near-monthly basis. Your pre-weight gain clothing that you may be hanging onto as an incentive to lose weight? It needs to go, because even if you lose weight, the first thing you’re going to want to do is go shopping. And there’s someone somewhere that will want what you’re giving way. . . even if you don’t. If you’ree having a really, truly difficult time parting with your pretties, put them in a plastic storage box and tuck them away somewhere safe. Then mark your calendar for exactly six months from now. If you haven’t gone looking for anything in that box by the time six months has passed, you likely never will. So get it out of your life!

So, there you go. You’re ready to clean out your closet quickly and effectively. Did I miss anything? Do you guys have a different method you like for closet decluttering? Share in the comments!

I don’t even know where I got this album. But it’s amazing. Equal parts party jam and ethereal chill-out.

I first found out about sensory deprivation in 2009, when a dude I knew was fixated on the idea. We lived in Cincinnati, and there was nowhere we could do it there, but he knew there was a flotation center in Chicago, and we talked about taking a trip and doing it together.

Fast-forward to this year, when I moved here. I knew it was something I still wanted to try, even though my original cohort in doing so wasn’t around. So after hearing me talk about it a bunch, Chris booked a session for the two of us at Space Time Tanks during the weekend directly after my birthday. He actually kept it a secret from me, which was agonizing – my compulsion for planning means I’m not good with surprises, but I actually guessed where we were going about two hours before our session began, when he told me we were going to a place in Lincoln Park and we would be there for an hour, incommunicado.

Here’s how it works: you get in a dark tank that’s about four feet by ten feet, and once you’re in, you lie down in about a foot of water. The water has a few hundred pounds of epsom salts dissolved in it, so it’s dense enough that a human can float. The water and air are constantly filtered for purity and to make sure no one suffocates, and the temperature of both are controlled so that they match the typical surface temperature of human skin, so you can’t tell where the water ends and the air begins. And then once you’re in, you lie there for an hour or longer.

I was interested in it because I thought it would be a good complement to my yoga practice – meditation, forcibly getting rid of distractions, clearing my mind, relaxing my body. What actually happened, though…

…was that I freaked the @#%$ out.

I didn’t know this when I went into the tank, but nearly everyone who does sensory deprivation experiences fight-or-flight within a few minutes of getting into the tank – their body is so accustomed to all kinds of different sensory inputs, and when these are taken away, there’s an immediate sense of, “Holy shit, am I going to be okay?” So what I experienced was normal for a first try, but it felt exactly like an anxiety attack. So instead of staying in the tank, I got out and hugged myself and shook for a few minutes…during which I rubbed my eyes. Which wasn’t a good idea when I’d just been sitting in salty water.

So I took a shower, and when I was calm enough again, I got back in the tank. And freaked out again.

This time, I opened the door. And thought to myself, “This is ridiculous. I’ve wanted to do this for almost three years. And Chris paid good money for me to do this on my birthday weekend. Get it together, self.”

I made a deal with myself. The next time I felt like I was going to die, I promised I’d stay in the tank and count to twenty. And then if I was still freaking out, I could get out. So I did that. And then I kept counting until I reached well past one hundred. At that point, I allowed my mind to relax and my body to feel nothing at all.

About ten minutes before the session was to end, I had another freakout. I felt like the water was moving without me moving, and this immediately called to mind my abhorrence of muddy lake water that threatens to hide all kinds of nasty, flesh-eating creatures. So then I was like, “Holy @#$*, what if the filters stop working? I could die in here!” And I threw the towel in.

After the session, Chris and I both rehashed our experiences with the man who owns Space Time Tanks. They have a lot of regulars, some of whom come in daily or weekly, and some of whom float for way longer than an hour at a time. Some come for physical therapy or sports medicine, and some just like the meditative aspect of shutting everything off. Some of the more spiritual participants have out-of-body experiences or get messages from beyond – I didn’t experience any of that, but I don’t doubt it happens for people who believe in it.

I’m definitely going to try again, but I’d say it’s going to take about two more tries for me to do an entire session without any anxiety. In the few moments I wasn’t freaking out, though, it was really nice. In fact, while I was in there, I figured out the answer to a problem I was facing on some client work. So that’s good, right?

Have you ever done sensory deprivation? How can I make it less frightening next time?