Rediscovering Craft — Part 2 of 4

Aislin and I packed up the car, grabbed our cat Bun Bun, and the three of us headed out. First north, then west, and made it to Portland about three days later. Everything felt strange, but new and beautiful. We hiked a lot, and ate and drank coffee that first month or two. There happens to be a ridiculous number of great donut and coffee shops in Portland. I’m looking at you, Blue Star Donuts.

Something started to stir not long after we arrived. I hadn’t really worked in months. That felt weird as f—. For someone who’s been a maker most of his life, that kind of stillness sits wrong. I needed to create again. I just didn’t know where the hell to start.

Finishing the Fundamentals UX Design Lab course gave me a little traction. It was a good beginning, a reminder that I still knew how to build things. But I also knew that healing wasn’t just going to come from therapy or reflection. For me, it had to come through craft—through the act of making.

I opened Figma, the tool that had carried me through the program, and let myself explore again. I’d already been using it before the move, but now I wanted to see where it could take me—learning new things, cementing what I already knew. The software still felt alive, designed by people who actually cared about design. I loved that.

I even started sketching, something I never used to do. I was always the designer who jumped straight to the computer. But lately, the analog side of life has pulled at me. There’s also a ridiculous number of record shops in Portland. We bought a record player and a few vinyls, and that small ritual—putting something physical in motion—started to feel right again.

Getting back into typography and white space grounded me. Grids, spacing, alignment—those small rules gave form to days that still didn’t have much shape.

I kept returning to the why in UX. Understanding the why had always mattered to me, but explaining it has never been easy. I tend to over-explain—something I’m still working on. So I began thinking in systems. I needed systems that simplified, both in design and in how I lived. Structure in the file meant structure in the body.

Some days I’d open a blank Figma file and think, what the f— am I even doing? And then I’d keep going anyway. It wasn’t production; it was therapy disguised as work.

There’s a line that stayed with me—one of those things an older designer might say: When your world breaks apart, start by designing one clean screen. I’m not sure where I heard it. Maybe I made it up. Either way, it stuck.

Design became the bridge between survival and curiosity. UX gave me reasoning; UI gave me craft. Even though I leaned toward UI because of my background, I learned to respect UX more—the discipline of defining, testing, and improving before building. It mirrored what I needed personally: stop guessing and start validating. It also came with its share of roadblocks, because of course it did. Nothing worth doing ever moves in a straight line.

A big gift from the Design Lab program was mentorship. I was paired with Helena—a designer who balanced empathy with blunt honesty. For the first time in my long career, I had someone I could bounce ideas off who understood my world. When the course ended, Helena introduced me to ADPList, where I found Cate, who became my primary mentor. I’ll write more about her later.

Somewhere in there, the shift began. Tiny, almost invisible. But real.

I wasn’t sketching anymore.I was designing again.