Module 1 - Reflections on a Blog

Upon opening my Blogger account, I was greeted with the remnants of a cycling adventure I took many years ago. My profile picture was smiling back at me with a bike helmet and high visibility vest on, cheeks flush from pushing through another incline in the Santa Cruz mountains, and an ecstatic smile from the effort. I was pleasantly startled and a little bittersweet, like bumping into an acquaintance I had meant to turn into a friend. The blog that my co-workers and I wrote that detail a 3 week long bike tour we took camping down the coast of California still existed. I had not opened Blogger since the last entry.

Today I am enrolled in a social media class at MiraCosta and I must set up an assignment blog for the class. However, I am still caught in liminal space between the smiling cyclist, the outdoor education director, the person who knew who she was, and the person I am trying to find in the present.

So, let's start with my first choice. I picked the template with almost no formatting whatsoever. Maybe I would start with a stark, minimal, and almost spooky style. I stared blankly at the blog title and cycled through typefaces and font colors and I felt the familiar flood of dread, doubt and overwhelm start to soak the corners of my mind. "Why can't I ever put my ideas together like I imagine them? How can I pursue a career in design when I lack so much confidence? Why do I always doubt myself?" and a familiar chorus of other negative self talk started to swirl in my head. I was not sure I could beat these voices today, so I went back to the selection of templates again. 

I knew that I liked the template with a bright orange body as soon as I saw it. It was not the alarming orange of a safety cone, but more like a soft but saturated coral. I have been drawn to orangey colors for several years now. At a bachelorette weekend gathering, full of many friends I cycled down the coast with, one buddy remarked I had only brought orange shirts and dresses. The comment surprised me, my intention had only been to bring my nicest clothes. Just weeks earlier my career coach had recently asked me what colors I had been drawn to, and I told her a bright flame red-orange. She asked if it was the same color as the sweatshirt I was wearing, and I was surprised to see it was the exact color. My coach said orange was the color of change, and maybe that was the first time I had considered that things would change. 

My next choice was to add a photo for the background. I quickly found a picture I took this week of a pastel sunrise. It was not the best photo I had ever taken, but it was a reminder of an old habit I had of taking sunrise photos when I lived on the coast of Catalina Island. I had woken up early that morning to head to the gym, and the lovely colors in the sky brought back 10 years of memories of watching the sun rise over Catalina.

Last, I made some typography choices. The first choice was easy. Monserrat for the body text because it is easy to read and feels minimalist in a way that isn't boring. I remembered trying to piece together a one page website for my career coach last year. The soaking dread that had filled me earlier today drowned me back then. I was so paralyzed I could only make a few choices, but one of those had been Monserrat. For the title I liked the default font, and I wish I knew it's name. It is a thick letterface with thin serifs and it made a nice contrast to the thin type I'd selected for the body of text. The ease that came with this last step was reassuring and buoyed my sense of self. A small smile worked into the corners of my mouth that reminded me of the girl in a bike helmet I had recently reconnected with.