kyle steed

So there I was, staring at this flashing folder telling me that my hard drive is dead and I’ve lost everything on it. And I had a choice to make…

There are a lot of things to worry about in this life; our jobs, our health, our finances to name just a few. And last night I was tempted to add one more to that list. While browsing Safari my macbook froze up on me. This has happened before so I took a break and came back to it about 10 minutes later. When I saw the “Beach Ball of Death” still spinning and unable to force quit any application I was forced to hold the power button down. (I hate doing that) After a cold restart the grey screen sat idle for a few minutes then flashed a folder icon with a question mark in the middle of it. I had never seen this error before so I turned to my trusty workhorse, the Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver edition), and googled the error. Come to find out, after all three troubleshooting steps on apple’s support page failed, that my hard drive was dead and I had just lost all my data. And the answer to your question is no I didn’t have a backup.

There were no real emotions involved. God had given me a peace that it was okay and the choice to trust God was instinctive. I feel God is giving me a fresh start and doesn’t want me to dwell on the past. He is calling me to look forward with hope and faith.

This actually goes far beyond the incident with my computer. That was just one parable God used to show me what He’s really talking about. He was speaking to the deep parts of my heart that hours before were feeling sad about being away from Japan and missing the people and times I had there. I feel He’s speaking about how temporal our lives are and while memories are important they are also fleeting and momentary. The important thing is that while we live here in a momentary lapse of time we have a God who is eternal and will always be with us, even when we suddenly crash like my hard drive did last night.

Veerle Pieters held a “What is Graphic Design?” competition on her blog earlier this month. Users where directed to this Flickr group to upload their submissions.

The first piece I designed was the 9th submissions out of 654 total that got submitted and the second piece I designed actually caught the eye of Veerle as seen here on her blog.

So needless to say I am ecstatic to have one of my designs as a possible winner of the competition. Is that being too cocky? Oh well.

So congrats to all the other people who caught her eye as well and best of luck to everyone.

Laying in bed this morning, half awake/half asleep, my mind was flooded with better, more creative, ways that I could be spending my time when I’m bored. Then I thought it would be a good idea to make a list and share them here with you. So here, in no particular order, are creative ways I (you) could spend my (your) time when I’m (you’re) bored.

1. Make a collage out of found objects from walking my dog
2. make a map of my thoughts
3. watch ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ for the hundredth time
4. draw in a journal
5. take a walk
6. work through a photoshop tutorial
7. cook some food
8. find new illustrations online
9. flip through the pages of Hand Job: A Catalog of Type
10. visit ffffound.com
11. plan a new vacation
12. paint that empty canvas I stretched 4 months ago
13. relax

Okay so obviously I couldn’t list every possible idea that came to mind this morning. For one I don’t remember half of them, since I was half asleep, and also this could go on forever.

But maybe you could share some of your ideas. I would like to here what keeps your creative mind working.