Design Got Boring

Design got boring.

Why?

This was my raison d'etre! It was my ikigai! "I am a designer!" I used to say.

How did it lose interest??

I think it's a few things:

Design lost its power to transform me.

Design was a path to glory, fame, and wealth.

I would end up on the other side well-respected by my peer group, perhaps even the world at large. I would be wealthy.

Now it all seems so hevel.

Doing it to "provide" doesn't seem to be enough.

I really am glory-motivated. I want to receive the praises of my peers, my superiors, and those coming up after me.

As a Christian, I feel like I should seek glory from my heavenly Father. And glory from my heavenly Father feels like it's something that comes in the after-life.

So it feels like for this life I'm assigned doldrums and endurance. But that doesn't really comport with the life and zeal of the apostles, for instance.

And it doesn't comport with what Jesus prayed: "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, so that the Son may glorify You, just as You gave Him authority over all mankind, so that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth by accomplishing the work which You have given Me to do. And now You, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world existed."

I guess I just feel like this age is coming to a rapid closure. And the stuff that matters for the next age is just so much more important. It's like not even close to comparison.

I feel like design is the earth and the kingdom of heaven is the sun. I'm standing on earth looking up into the heavens and being increasingly drawn toward it.

I can no longer live under the illusion that the sun travels around the earth. No, the earth travels around the sun.

Of course, I might just be depressed.

When depressed, my actual physiology is just like, "No, you're not interested in anything." And of course one of the sucky parts of not feeling interested in anything is not being interested in getting interested again.

And there goes a week... Two weeks.

But there is something more to this than mere depression.

I used to think design had real answers, real solutions to real problems. I thought design enabled a toolset, a way of thinking, that would ultimately make a real difference.

Now, I'm not so sure. I mean, I'll be the first to admit, it's a bit egocentric to pursue a field of work in order to change the world.

In reality, doing good design is like doing good plumbing. Use the basics, apply the right patterns, be clear and precise, but not overly precious. Instead of moving literal sewage around, the pipes I lay move people around the internet, hopefully in a way that makes them better and makes money.

I think COVID might have something to do with it, too.

It really unmasked the design profession in my opinion.

The internet's wavering on the brink. It may not end up being a net positive. And that's a bit sad for someone who grew up with the stars in my eyes.

Being let down by technology is I guess a bit cliche by this point. But I was holding on, you know?

But now I know, the internet can not substitute for meaning, values, relationships, and actual local culture.

Embodied presence, living in a space and time, in relationship with other humans, is just insanely more precious and life-giving.

And while I wish our internet infrastructure ran smoother, more humanely, more effectively generally, I don't see technology as being able to solve the fundamental problem of humanity: the problem of death.

Since the beginning, we have sought useless covers for our guilt and shame, and technology is just one of many.

But we can't hold up the stuff we've made to the one we walked with in the garden and say, "See what I've made! Now please let me back in!"

It's just that we're born in sin, born under a sentence of death. We're born trying to find eternity, to get back up the mountain and into the garden, to eat from the tree of life.

But we dirt-balls are just not capable of such things. And the worst year of our collective lives, 2020, drenched in death and dying, rips away the facade.

The Bible is ripped through with remarks about what really matters. It's got the whole story, start to finish. And it's got all the deep value. And it's got the thing we really want: eternal life.

It's strange to me we pay so little attention to it as a species. And those who pay a great deal of attention to it are few and far between. And what's worse, there are many who claim to be experts in it but comparably few who actually are.

The internet's help bringing the expertise of the very few to the masses. BibleProject is doing that. But it's only one studio, and there's so much more to be done with the Bible.

There's so much beauty, meaning, and depths of wisdom just sitting there waiting to be unpacked.

The Bible itself of course can not save us. But it does quite a good job of introducing us to the One who can, of moving us to call out to Him.

From a pure academic perspective, the Bible can be cold and stale. But then again, almost everything from a pure academic perspective is.

In seeing how the Bible speaks in its own unique way, from its own unique perspective, asking its own unique questions, we can start to see everything in light of it.

The wisdom of today's twitter sages falls flat. The platitudes of today's book writers rings hollow. Today's philosophers, poets, and pundits, our entertainers, educators, and artists - they seem so absolutely, completely bonkers.

What lessons do they have to offer? Be stoic? Lose yourself? Follow your heart? Self-actualize? Enjoy yourself? Take care of yourself?

Why? Really? Why? I just can't find any substantive answer in any of the nonsense a godless culture has to offer.

Nihilism, humanism, metamodernism? As geocentric as the day is long. To spend all this time staring at the dirt when there's a sun out there? It's absurd!

Having seen the light, I can't go back to the darkness. It's been illuminated for me. But illumination on its own isn't enough. Illumination doesn't create sanctification. It's just awareness. You can see what a codswallop the whole lot of things are, but that doesn't mean your heart doesn't long for the codswallop.

Continual weed and feed must be done in the heart to hear the word and be fruitful.