Embracing 2024
Happy Belated New Year!
I hope everyone has had a safe holiday so far.
Apologies for the delayed post. I was sick over the holidays and didn’t move from my sofa. I didn’t have the mindset to write a blog post. And now, I’m preparing to return to work to prepare for the hell that is the Super Bowl, to be followed by March Madness and the Masters. 🙃
This is a mind-dump post, so excuse me ahead of time if this seems all over the place.
I’ve been Figma’ing in my downtime over the holidays to keep my mind stimulated, and I even branded, designed, and prototyped a fake dating app 🤣. My husband found my little personal project entertaining as he watched me debate while downloading today’s top dating apps to see the trends if they at all changed, and then I realized I was treating this like a real project. Nonetheless, I would have to say that Hinge was quite lovely.
Four concepts later, I landed with thirty-plus frames to map out a general experience.
For the remainder of my sanity, I repotted half my plants (yeah, I know, in the winter, lol), and I conceptualized ideas for four more novels, two of which are potential series. For being sick, I was on a roll. I like to get them out of my head and on the shelf to return to later. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing a lot of digital spring cleaning between Obsidian, Dropbox, and Trello.
Side note: thoughts on the Figma and Adobe deal falling through?
I have mixed thoughts, Adobe isn’t the perfect company but has taken over the creative industry in some sense and Figma isn’t perfect either (and high-key shady when it comes to subscriptions lol).
Knowing Adobe, this move was probably the better between two poisons, especially for the users.
With the new year, I was checking out a few more apps, which I will discuss later once I figure my way around them. I didn’t realize how much I rely on x-callback-urls.
Anytype looked pretty nice until I realized it didn’t support URL schemes. But I’ll keep it installed watch it closely.
The day Notion allows callbacks and local storage, I will return to it in a heartbeat. But Obsidian is excellent for me as I’ve locked in a comfortable workflow. I know they’ve updated tables recently, but I wish I could have the oomph that Notion has without having so many plugins, as I’m not the type to hoard them.
We’ll also see where Tana lands.
Until then, Obsidian is here to stay and will remain regardless of where I may pick up and go.
After having it strictly on my iPad Pro, I’ve adopted Affinity into my OSX experience. I was against it at first, but having “only” Figma and Pixelmator wasn’t enough anymore.
I needed—wanted—something else other than Adobe and Affinity scratches that itch without killing my MacBook. If it ever includes an AI generative fill, it will be a nice on-the-go contender for sure.
Something else that I’ve wholly adopted is the Arc browser. It was a little funky at first, and the sidebar took a bit of adjusting, but now, I absolutely love it. There’s something cozy about it, which completely changed how I browse the internet. It isn’t easy to explain.
I recommend that anyone should try it to experience something new. But you gotta work with it for a week or so to truly get the feel for it.
I signed up for SetApp. After doing the math, I save money using SetApp compared to getting all the apps individually (for now).
These are the apps I use constantly:
- DevUtils (this plus Dadroit JSON viewer)
- Bartender
- QuitAll
- CleanShot X
- Paste
- Timing (great way to see how you spend your time organically)
- CleanMyMac X (been super helpful with uninstalling Mac Store apps that get ‘stuck’ in Login/Background app)
- Ulysses
- PixelSnap
- Yoink
When I have the time, I’ll probably talk about some of these in the near future.
Last, I landed on Tool Finder and discovered so many other apps through this. My curiosity got the best of me, and I found myself downloading ones I had never heard of before to see what they were about.
It’s evident that devs are trying to find the next ‘big’ but unique experience that hooks people across different categories. Some apps were absolutely beautiful but lacked practicality, and vice versa.
For project management, I realized how unique Trello is in the space. Sure, many have kanban views, but Trello is… Trello. Like everything else, it has its quirks, but they don’t overshadow its simplicity if you’re not a min-max type.
And there’s my mind dump. 🙂
The next post I intend to cover my career change from creative marketing into digital and product centered. That will be a beefy one, so I will take my time on the draft.
Once again, happy new year and have a good one!
