Author: Lonnie Fields (page 21 of 26)

The Email That Never Got Sent

Last Tuesday I spent three hours writing documentation for a tool that processes customer feedback data. Nobody asked me to do this. My manager doesn’t even know the documentation exists. The tool itself was something I built six months ago to solve a problem that was driving me crazy, but officially it doesn’t exist either.

This is the contradiction of caring about your work: the projects that actually matter to you are rarely the ones that matter to anyone else. They’re the side quests that come from genuine frustration or curiosity, not from quarterly planning sessions. They’re what you work on when you’re supposed to be doing something else.

Why Official Projects Feel Like Performance Art

Here’s what I’ve noticed about most official work projects: they’re designed by committee to solve problems that sound important in meetings but feel abstract when you’re actually doing the work. Take the “customer experience optimization initiative” I’m technically leading right now. It involves a lot of spreadsheets and stakeholder alignment calls, but zero interaction with actual customers.

Meanwhile, the feedback tool I mentioned earlier came from reading hundreds of support tickets and realizing our categorization system was completely broken. Customers were telling us they were confused, but we were categorizing their complaints as “technical issues” when they were really saying “your interface makes no sense.” That discrepancy kept me up at night.

The difference is obvious once you see it. Official projects optimize for meetings and metrics. Unofficial projects optimize for actually fixing things.

The Rebellion of Small Improvements

I’ve started keeping a list of these shadow projects, partly because I forget about them otherwise. There’s the automated email I set up to remind the sales team about feature requests that have been sitting in our backlog for over six months. There’s the simple dashboard I built to track which bugs actually affect real users versus the ones that only show up in our testing environment. Last month I spent my lunch breaks redesigning our internal status page because the current one requires three clicks to find out if our API is working.

None of these appear on my performance review. Most of them took less time to build than a single planning meeting for our official projects. But they solve real problems for real people who have to deal with broken processes every day.

The best part is that when you’re working on something you actually care about, the solution tends to be simpler. You’re not trying to accommodate every possible edge case or political consideration. You just want to fix the annoying thing.

When Caring Becomes Risky

There’s a trap here, though. I’ve watched colleagues burn out by caring too much about projects that their organization fundamentally doesn’t value. They build beautiful solutions to important problems, then get frustrated when nobody adopts them or gives them credit. The passion that makes these projects meaningful can also make their failure feel personal.

I learned this lesson with a data visualization tool I built two years ago. I was convinced it would change how our team understood user behavior. I spent weeks perfecting it, adding features nobody requested. When it launched to zero fanfare and minimal adoption, I took it as a personal rejection rather than what it actually was: a mismatch between what I thought was important and what the organization was ready to prioritize.

The trick is learning to care without attachment to outcomes. Build the thing because it needs to exist, not because you need recognition for building it.

Finding Your Real Work

The projects I actually care about share a few characteristics: they solve problems I run into personally, they make someone’s daily work noticeably easier, and they feel like craftsmanship rather than performance. They’re small enough to build without permission but meaningful enough to matter.

Sometimes these projects do get noticed and become official initiatives. The feedback categorization tool eventually caught the attention of our product team, and now it’s being integrated into our main platform. But that’s not why I built it, and it wasn’t any less valuable when it was just a script running on my laptop.

I think the real work happens in the margins between what we’re supposed to be doing and what we see that needs to be done. It’s the difference between following a job description and actually solving problems. Most organizations struggle to create space for this kind of work, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It just means it’s happening quietly, in documentation nobody asked for and tools that don’t appear on any roadmap.

What are you working on that nobody knows about? What small rebellion against broken processes are you quietly nurturing? Those projects might matter more than anything in your official workload.

The Counter That Knew My Order

There was this coffee shop in Portland where the barista started making my drink before I reached the counter. Not because I was a regular in that performative way where you announce your loyalty to strangers, but because I’d been sitting in the same corner booth for three months, nursing the same oat milk cortado while pretending to work on my novel. The foam art stopped being a surprise after week two.

I’ve been thinking about that place a lot lately, mostly because I can’t find anything like it here in Denver. It’s not about the coffee, though theirs was excellent. It’s about how some spaces just fit around you like a well-worn jacket, no adjustments needed.

The Apartment That Actually Made Sense

My friend Sarah had this studio in Brooklyn that was technically too small for human habitation. The kitchen was three appliances arranged in a line, and her bed doubled as a couch because there wasn’t room for both. But somehow it worked. The afternoon light hit just right around 4 PM, and she’d positioned her desk to catch it perfectly. Her plants thrived in ways that defied the laws of New York real estate.

I spent exactly four nights there over two years, but I can still tell you where she kept the good tea and which floorboard creaked near the bathroom. Some places imprint themselves on you with an efficiency that has nothing to do with square footage. I think about that studio when I’m rearranging my own furniture for the fifteenth time, trying to make my spacious bedroom feel half as comfortable as her 300-square-foot life.

The Library Where Time Moved Differently

The downtown branch on Fifth Street had this reading room with windows that faced north, so the light was consistent all day. No dramatic shadows shifting across your page, no squinting when the sun decided to make an appearance. Just steady, reliable illumination for getting things done. I finished two freelance projects there that I’d been avoiding for months at home.

The woman who worked the reference desk had been there since 1987 and could find anything in under three minutes. She never asked why I needed a 1962 city planning document or the complete works of a poet nobody had heard of. Just handed them over with the kind of professional disinterest that felt like respect for your privacy.

Libraries are supposed to feel institutional, but this one felt like someone’s very organized living room. Maybe it was the way the older patrons had claimed their favorite chairs, or how the afternoon newspaper readers had worked out an unspoken system for sharing sections. Either way, I could think clearly there in ways I couldn’t anywhere else.

The Kitchen That Taught Me Things

My grandmother’s kitchen had exactly two good knives and a cutting board that had been scored by forty years of meal prep. The gas burners took forever to heat up, and the oven ran twenty degrees hot. By all reasonable standards, it was poorly equipped. But I learned to make bread there, and pasta from scratch, and how to rescue oversalted soup with a halved potato.

She never measured anything, which used to drive me crazy when I was trying to recreate her recipes in my own kitchen. “Just until it looks right,” she’d say, adding flour to pie dough by feel. Now I realize the kitchen taught me to cook by making me pay attention. No fancy equipment to hide behind, no digital timers to think for me. Just ingredients and instinct and the particular way steam rose from her ancient stockpot.

I can make her chicken soup in my current kitchen, with its induction cooktop and convection oven. But it never tastes exactly the same, and I think it’s because I’m not the same person who learned to cook in a place that demanded attention instead of offering convenience.

The Places That Stick

These aren’t necessarily the most beautiful places I’ve been, or the most comfortable, or even the ones where I’ve spent the most time. They’re the places that somehow aligned with who I was in that moment, creating a temporary sense of rightness that I’m still chasing. The coffee shop closed last spring, Sarah moved to Oakland, the library got renovated and lost its reading room windows, and my grandmother’s house was sold after she died.

Maybe that’s part of what made them feel like home, the knowledge, even then, that they weren’t permanent. That I’d better pay attention while I was there, memorize the way the light fell and the sounds the building made and exactly how it felt to belong somewhere without trying.

I’m curious about the places that have stuck with you. Not the ones you’re supposed to remember, but the random coffee shops and borrowed bedrooms and library corners that somehow got under your skin. The places that taught you something about what it feels like when everything just fits.

I watched my sourdough starter bubble with what I can only describe as malicious intent last Tuesday. Three weeks of careful feeding, temperature monitoring, and whispered encouragements, and it still smells like acetone mixed with disappointment. My kitchen counter looks like a science experiment gone wrong, and I’m starting to suspect the starter knows exactly what it’s doing.

This got me thinking about all the things I’m currently learning badly. Not the things I’ve given up on or the skills I’m naturally terrible at, but the ones I’m actively pursuing with enthusiasm and achieving mediocre results. There’s something weirdly liberating about being consciously incompetent at stuff you care about.

Guitar, Or How to Make Neighbors Question Their Life Choices

I bought an acoustic guitar six months ago after watching too many campfire scenes in movies. The romantic vision involved me strumming thoughtfully while friends gathered around, maybe someone harmonizing. The reality involves my upstairs neighbor texting “everything okay?” at 9 PM because my attempt at a G chord sounds like furniture being dragged across hardwood.

My fingers refuse to cooperate with basic chord progressions. The calluses are forming in all the wrong places. I can play exactly one song all the way through: “Wonderwall,” which feels like admitting defeat before I’ve even started. But here’s what I didn’t expect: the muscle memory is slowly building. My left hand is developing this weird independence, like it’s learning a secret language my brain hasn’t been invited to understand yet.

For anyone considering picking up guitar as an adult, get a decent instrument. Don’t torture yourself with a $50 acoustic that fights back. Spring for something that stays in tune and doesn’t require superhuman finger strength to press the strings down. Your neighbors will thank you, and you might actually stick with it long enough to graduate beyond “Wonderwall.”

Pottery: Centering Clay and Expectations

The pottery studio downtown offers drop-in sessions on Thursday nights. I’ve been going for two months, and my bowl collection looks like abstract art created by someone having a seizure. The instructor, Maria, has stopped offering helpful suggestions and now just nods encouragingly when I produce something that vaguely resembles functional pottery.

Last week I finally understood what “centering” means. Not the zen metaphor part, but the actual physical process of getting clay to stop wobbling on the wheel. It’s all in the way you brace your arms against your body, creating this stable foundation while your hands do delicate work. The clay responds to confidence and consistency, two things I’m still working on in most areas of life.

The best part about pottery isn’t making beautiful things. It’s the complete mental focus required. You can’t think about work deadlines or grocery lists when you’re trying to pull up walls without creating a lopsided disaster. Your brain gets this rare chance to shut up and let your hands figure things out. If you’re looking for a hobby that forces mindfulness without the meditation app guilt, pottery might be your answer.

Photography: Chasing Light Like an Amateur Stalker

I upgraded from phone photos to an actual camera last spring, convinced that better equipment would automatically improve my eye. Turns out expensive gear just makes your mistakes more obvious and expensive. I’ve taken roughly 3,000 photos, and maybe twelve of them don’t look like they were shot during an earthquake.

The revelation came during golden hour last Sunday. I was trying to photograph my friend’s dog at the park, getting increasingly frustrated with blurry shots and poor composition. Then the dog stopped mid-run, ears perked, perfectly framed by backlighting that made his fur glow. I clicked without thinking, and somehow captured this moment of pure alertness and joy. Pure luck, but it taught me something about being ready instead of trying to force moments to happen.

Learning photography is like learning to see differently. You start noticing how light hits surfaces throughout the day, how shadows create shapes, how the angle of your body changes what stories you’re telling. It’s worth the frustration of endless mediocre shots for those rare moments when everything aligns.

The Sourdough Situation: A Microbial Relationship Status

Back to that starter, which I’ve named Vincent after Van Gogh because it’s equally temperamental and unpredictable. Internet forums promised that keeping sourdough alive would be simple: flour, water, time. They failed to mention that it’s basically adopting a pet that requires daily attention and has mysterious mood swings.

Vincent has taught me that baking is chemistry pretending to be art. Temperature matters. Humidity matters. The type of flour matters in ways I’m still discovering. My first loaves resembled hockey pucks with the density of small planets. But last weekend’s attempt had actual holes in the crumb structure, which apparently is cause for celebration in the sourdough world.

The meditative aspect of kneading and waiting appeals to people who need an excuse to slow down. If you’re someone who enjoys routines and doesn’t mind the occasional dramatic failure, sourdough might become your obsession too. Just warn your neighbors about the smell during the learning phase.

Finding Joy in the Learning Curve

These half-learned skills share something beyond my obvious lack of natural talent. They demand presence in ways that feel increasingly rare. No multitasking while centering clay. No phone checking while tuning guitars. No rushing through the long fermentation process that turns flour and water into actual bread.

Maybe being bad at things you care about is underrated. There’s no pressure to perform or achieve quick results. Just the satisfaction of small improvements and the occasional unexpected success. Plus, lowered expectations mean every minor breakthrough feels like winning the lottery.

What are you learning badly these days? I’d love to hear about your current projects and spectacular failures. There’s something encouraging about knowing other people are out there struggling with their own versions of Vincent the sourdough starter.

The Cashier Who Saw Everything

I was buying cereal and milk at the grocery store when the cashier, maybe nineteen with purple streaks in her hair, looked at my cart and said, “You know what I’ve noticed? People buying the exact same things week after week never look happy.” She scanned my Cheerios. “But the ones trying something new, even if it’s just a different kind of pasta, they seem lighter somehow.”

This was three years ago. I still think about it every time I’m stuck in a routine that feels more like sleepwalking than living. That throwaway observation from someone I’ll never see again has influenced more of my decisions than most advice I’ve actively sought.

The Client Call That Wasn’t About Work

During a project meeting last spring, my client mentioned her daughter was struggling with math anxiety. Not the kind where you freeze during tests, but the deeper kind where numbers themselves felt like enemies. “We found this teacher who doesn’t use worksheets,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “Instead, she has kids measure ingredients for cookies, count trading cards, figure out how many songs fit on a playlist. My daughter loves math now because she doesn’t realize she’s doing math.”

I’ve been thinking about this approach ever since. How many things that feel impossible are really just presented in the wrong package? I started applying this to my own creative blocks. Instead of forcing myself to write blog posts, I write long emails to friends. Instead of formal brainstorming sessions, I take walks and voice-memo my thoughts. The work gets done, but it doesn’t feel like work.

The Stranger on the Train Platform

Waiting for the delayed 8:17 to downtown, I overheard two strangers start talking. One was complaining about his job, the usual litany of bad bosses and boring projects. The other guy listened, then said something I wrote down in my phone: “Sounds like you’re solving the wrong problems. Maybe the question isn’t how to make your job better, but how to make your skills work somewhere else.”

The first guy got defensive, started explaining why leaving wasn’t practical. But the second stranger wasn’t backing down. “I’m not saying quit tomorrow. I’m saying stop trying to fix a situation that’s fundamentally broken. Start building toward something that isn’t.” The train arrived before I heard how it ended, but that distinction between fixing and building has stuck with me through every frustrating situation since.

The Bookstore Revelation

In the mystery section at Powell’s, an older woman was helping her teenage grandson pick books. He kept gravitating toward the thickest novels on the shelf, explaining he wanted to get his money’s worth. She pulled out a slim paperback and said, “Honey, the best meals aren’t the biggest ones. They’re the ones that taste so good you remember them years later.”

She was talking about books, but I heard it as life advice. I’d been approaching everything with that same bigger-is-better mindset. More features in my projects. Longer workout routines I’d inevitably abandon. Social plans packed so tight there was no room to actually enjoy them. That grandmother’s wisdom about memorable versus massive has helped me say no to the impressive stuff that doesn’t actually serve me.

Why These Moments Matter

None of these people knew they were teaching me anything. They weren’t trying to be profound or memorable. That’s exactly what made their words hit so hard. There’s something about wisdom delivered without intention that bypasses all our usual defenses against advice.

I’ve started paying more attention to these casual conversations, the ones happening in checkout lines and coffee shops and train stations. Not in a creepy way, just with the recognition that insight shows up in the most ordinary places. Sometimes the person waiting behind you at the post office has exactly the perspective you need, if you’re listening for it.

What conversations have lodged themselves in your memory? The ones that resurface when you’re making decisions or questioning assumptions? I’m curious about the throwaway comments that somehow became your unofficial life philosophy.