Last month, I was speaking with a dear friend and mentor. He let me know he embarked on a PhD program. Now, this person is one to often post news and important happenings on LinkedIn, but this PhD program had nothing to do with his profession; it was not for career progression, rather personal enrichment.

This led us to a conversation about the importance of doing things just for you.

The past couple of months, I have joined and become involved in a community organization. It has nothing to do with my career; it is something I do for me as an extracurricular with only my immediate family and a few close friends in the know. It takes up an amount of time I would normally set aside for writing, hence the lack of blog posts since the new year, but I love that I have something just for me.

I have still been able to do things for my career I share publicly. I was a panelist on a kids data visualization webinar, and will also serve as a jury member for a kids data visualization competition. I was a guest on the VoxPopcast podcast, where I spoke about my Tommy Westphall Universe project while also discussing fictional shared universes. I will also be a commencement speaker at my alma mater, Northampton Community College, where I also currently teach as an adjunct.

Doing things just for ourselves is good, it reminds us not every activity or outing must be documented online or used as social or professional currency. It allows us to exist in the moment more, without thinking about how we want to share this with everyone we know; it makes it all more meaningful.

December 2015. I had just completed my first semester of college, during which I changed my major from general studies to communication studies with a new career goal of working in corporate communications or public relations. First things first, it was time to look for an internship.

I had little on-paper to offer anyone, but I figured there would be no harm in applying, seeing how far I made it into the process, and learn where I stood among other candidates. The opportunity I felt most confident in was a communications internship for Drum Corps International—an organization I had experience with as a marching member of Jersey Surf, a performing arts ensemble which competed in the DCI World Class circuit. I cannot recall my mindset of the time, but I can assume there was a belief any connection to an organization would hopefully lessen the need for the skills needed to complete the job; foolishness.

There were two people who helped me during my application process to DCI—the late Michael Boo, a prolific marching arts writer who passed away in 2020, and Joe Lesko, the founder of Micro Marching League (MML), whom of which I had formed a sort of friendship with since being on MML since 2012.

Michael offered me not only a detailed eye on my cover letter, a history of how he pioneered a lot of communications for the marching arts activity in the digital age, but also career-defining advice on the dangers of connecting self-worth with work output.

Joe, while also offering a line-by-line editing eye on my application as a whole, offered me something much more meaningful and overall impactful to my career.

"I just realized I could use your help with social stuff for MML, if you're interested."

This message kickstarted what would eventually become my career, much of it rooted in social media content creation, management, and analysis. Not only was Joe willing to give me full creative freedom to do with MML's social presence as I pleased, but offered me guidance along the way, serving as my first career mentor as I learned the ropes of social media and finding news ways to be creative.

Much of the work I have done for MML remains as part of my portfolio, though my contributions to its platforms currently exist in the form of a yearly recap video. Still, I will always credit MML as my first big break in my career—something I remind Joe whenever I can.

My application was rejected almost immediately for that internship; I think I heard back within a matter of hours. Still, what I was able to learn those first few years of running MML's social media made an immense impact on the quality of work I put out today while serving as a constant reminder about giving back and the importance of mentorship.

This semester, I returned to the classroom as an adjunct professor, teaching two sections of Introduction to Communication—one online and one in-person. These two sections were taught quite differently due to the limitations of asynchronous learning. While my online class may not have had the opportunity to engage in classroom activities, my in-person class did and it was a huge success.

Here's my personal ranking of all the activities I ran during the fall semester, based on how well they related to the learning material, the personal commitment it required to run the activity, and how well the activity ran/was received by the students.

Red Flag or Green Flag

Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 2/5

This activity was part of the lecture on interpersonal communication. It was not my original plan to run this activity, but a few hours before the class, my original plan fell through and this was a last-minute alternative. The premise is putting scenarios up on the screen one at a time. The students then decide as a group if they are green flags, red flags, or require further discussion. (e.g. "A person texts you multiple times a day," "They try to mediate every argument you have with someone else," "A person agrees with everything you say.") These almost always lead to a conversation, especially when you change the scenario a bit by making the person a friend, a coworker, or a boss, which usually led to a difference in answer.

This game is easy to lead, only requiring a few slides and pre-drafted scenarios, but I found there were much better activities to relate to the material, and the challenge wasn't there for the students to sink their teeth into, being met with a lukewarm overall reaction to the game. This was also done halfway through the semester, so the class was comfortable engaging with me and each other at this point. This is the only activity on this list I would not run again.

Taboo

Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 2/5
Student Reception: 4.5/5

This activity was part of the lecture on verbal and nonverbal communication. What makes this game difficult to run is a) you have to purchase the game, which I would recommend two copies of and b) it's the game on this list with the most rules, and anyone who has been to a dinner party with a board game knows, it's hard to get everyone to pay attention when all they want to do is play the game.

This game was the first one we ran during the semester, so it was a nice, easy way for students to start to get to know each other. I bought two copies of the game at Five Below and split my class up into two, ten-person groups, with five students on each team (that's twenty students in all, if you lost track). Overall, the students enjoyed themselves quite a bit and it's something they asked for more time to play because of how much fun they were having.

Internet Sleuth

Relatability to Material: 4.5/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 3.5/5

This activity was part of the lecture on research & organization. I borrowed this concept from my public speaking professor in 2017, and one I was really excited to run leading up to this semester. The class has twenty minutes to act as internet sleuths and find as much information about you, the professor, as possible. This is a fun one if you are more online than not. For someone like me with public social profiles, press, public presentations, etc..., the students had a lot to pick from. It also helps that there are other people with my name, so students had to pay close attention in making sure it was the correct William Careri.

At the end of the twenty minutes, the class used Boggle rules to see who had the most unique facts or pieces of information about me. The only thing that's not as fun about this one is how quiet it can get in the classroom. You can choose to have them run this in teams instead of individuals, creating more dialogue, but I just played music for my class during the duration of their research.

Two Truths and a Lie

Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 3/5
Student Reception: 3.5/5

This activity was part of the lecture on communication apprehension. Most know the concept of this game—a student stands up at the front of the class and states three facts about themselves, two of which are true and one is a lie. The class then has sixty seconds to ask questions to try and identify which statement is the lie. This one requires a little more involvement as a facilitator: timing the questions, providing and collecting notecards with the three facts, and counting votes on which the class thinks the false statement is.

I would recommend a) Participating as the first speaker to break the ice a bit and b) Doing this as the first speaking assignment if you have multiple, just because the time commitment of two minutes in front of the class breaks the ice and is a fun way to ease them into being front and center.

Island Survivor

Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 5/5

This activity was part of the lecture on persuasion. There are a few versions of this game online, but this is the one I went with. You can break your class up into two or more groups. This day, I had less students than usual, so I had two groups of seven. Each group is given a worksheet (or in my class, I just put it up on the screen) with the following prompt: "You were aboard a cruise ship when a storm caused the ship to capsize. You and several others survived and reached a nearby desert island. One passenger managed to save a survival kit containing a small, limited supply of food, but only enough for five people. Your group must now decide which five individuals should receive the food to remain healthy and strong, and be prepared to justify your choices."

The next slide has the names, ages, and occupations of fifteen people, which they have to limit to five to receive food. This one was extremely fun to watch as a professor, seeing the arguments and methods of persuasion students chose to utilize in order to get their preferred person on the list of survivors. I also ran this late in the semester, so students were more comfortable with each other to offer genuinely funny and obscure rationale they may not have early in the semester.

Egg Drop

Relatability to Material: 5/5
Ease of Running: 2/5
Student Reception: 5/5

This activity was part of the lecture on small group communication. I borrowed this concept from my speech communication professor in 2016, though I know it's typically used in middle school science classes. I gave my students a newspaper, popsicle sticks, some tape, a single sheet of bubble wrap, and an egg. They had fifteen minutes to create something that would keep the egg safe while I dropped it down a flight of stairs (roughly twelve feet). My twist: they would be given two opportunities, but their supplies would not replenish. This made them be more resourceful, and also allowed them to try a new strategy when or if their first one failed, which both teams had occur the first time, but both succeeded the second.

This was by far the most fun the students had all semester. I ran it in the first half of the semester and acted as a major turning point for their comfort levels with each other. This was the only time they became so loud that I received a noise complaint from campus security, which also served as an inside joke we retained the rest of the semester.

Teaching shorter lectures and then using games to have my students more engaged with the material was tremendously useful. Not only was this crucial for a public speaking-heavy class when it came to comfort levels with each other, but for a generation where you need to keep things fresh every thirty or forty minutes, these activities served as variation in the learning process. Their grades also reflected that the material was retained better, with many revisiting previous lectures later in the semester to give them competitive advantages in future activities.

I will mix up games in future semesters, but some will become permanent staples.

This week marked the completion of my first semester as an adjunct professor at Northampton Community College, the institution where I began my educational journey ten years ago. I had the privilege of teaching two sections of Introduction to Communication—one online and one in-person.

The decision to start teaching

I had been toying with the idea of teaching for a few years, around the time I started graduate school. I have said this before, but I believe every decision I have made in my career, regardless of which way I pivot, has been rooted in a deep love of communicating complex information in uncomplex ways—verbally, written, or through design languages. This same foundation naturally feeds into traditional education.

The decision to teach at Northampton, the same place I both started my educational career as well as revitalized my love of learning, was an easy one. When I first started college after high school, I saw higher education as something I simply had to get through, or hurdle over. It took all but one semester to realize it is also something you can enjoy and get a lot out of beyond the memorization and recitation of facts. At the end of my first semester, I had scrapped together a 1.9 GPA, but also a new driver to prove I could do better. Three years later, I had a 3.5 GPA and graduated from the Honors Program, capped off with a conference presentation on the impact of citizen journalism on the public sphere in the age of trending news—a topic which encapsulated and represented the growth I had achieved as a student. This was in no small part thanks to the tremendous faculty I had, which is why deciding to be among them now as an adjunct was both humbling and an honor.

Looking back at semester one

First, the biggest surprises I encountered:

1. Teaching is extremely performative; there is a definite feeling of being "on" which doesn't exist quite the same as giving a keynote or in other public speaking engagements, which actually helps separating the teacher versus personal version of you
2. It was easy for me to see my students' grades as an extension of my teaching performance, which was not always the case, especially when it came to missing assignments which holds a lot of personal accountability for the student
3. Teaching online was significantly more difficult than in-person teaching, which didn't have the same "performance" aspect of in-person, but did rely much more on getting the message as clear out from the get-go, without the added benefit of instant follow-up questions for clarification as you get in the classroom

Secondly, here are the biggest areas of improvement I need to make heading into the spring semester:

1. I had an assignment submission policy more lax than I would have liked, and while it did help the overall grades of my students, it did not enforce the importance of deadlines, which they will see more as they continue with their education
2. My in-person class was able to see much more of my personality and passion while teaching, which my online class missed out on and perhaps did not have to
3. Going off of above, but keeping the internal note that my students' grades are not necessarily a reflection of my own teaching

Lasty, here are three things I want to carry over into the spring semester:

1. Having my students get to know each other early really helped them bond and feel more comfortable presenting and offering feedback, seeing themselves are collaborators and partners in learning rather than just peers
2. Going off-script by finding case studies I personally find interesting and exhibiting such passion will be more impressionable for the students, helping them stay attentive and retain the information better
3. Keeping in-mind the diversity of students in my classes—high school dual-enrollment, traditional college, and nontraditional adult learners—offering more reminders and personalized emails to assist with navigating their grade and the course overall was appreciated and well-received by them, directly leading to improved grades without sacrificing difficulty in the material

What my students thought, according to their course evaluations

"The feedback given by Professor Careri is the most helpful and genuine out of all the professors I've had. You can tell he actually wants to help you improve rather than giving vague, obligatory feedback."

"I really do feel that taking this class has helped me grow my confidence in the way I communicate and I would not have gotten to this point without Professor Careri's support. He really knows how to engage the class and get the students to practice the communication information that we've learned."

"Professor Careri is hands down the best. You can tell he's passionate about teaching and has a way of engaging with his students that creates a fun atmosphere. He makes the learning process simple and understandable."

Where I go from here

As of right now, I will be teaching two mid-start online sections of Introduction to Communication in the spring. While sixteen weeks offered me the opportunity to navigate the basics of teaching, I still have a lot to learn and look forward to taking these lessons with me.

We have a lot of black walnut trees on our property. This time of year, the black walnuts fall, each slightly larger than a golf ball. At times, they pile so densely, you can't take a step without crushing one. It's not fun for your ankles, nor our dog's feet.

Two years ago, we bought a Nut Wizard to help us harvest them, or at the very least, pick them up. We can easily collect close to 1,000 of them each autumn.

Today, I spent about an hour, casually walking around the property, using the Nut Wizard to pick up any black walnuts I could find. When my Nut Wizard was full, I emptied them into this large bucket to process in the next week or so. I kept the bucket at the center of the property, electing to not move it around with me. This meant I would be taking long walks across the property the further I got from the bucket.

At one point, Victoria asked me why I didn't drag the bucket around to make shorter trips. She then tried to move the bucket, realized how heavy it was, and then understood. But it wasn't entirely about the weight why I kept the bucket where it was.

It's seemingly the default for people, including myself, to look for the most efficient way to do things. This is usually done to save time and/or money. Sure, it would have been the more efficient thing to move the bucket every ten minutes or so in order to create a lot shorter trips. But maybe we don't always need to be fighting for efficiency in *everything* we do. In today's case, I had no meetings I needed to prepare for, no work I had to complete, no place to go. It was my day to relax and destress for the week ahead.

As the autumn breeze brushed my sweater this early morning, Nut Wizard in-hand, I didn't mind the longer walks. It gave me more time to think and didn't cause any strenuous motions, like if I did have to lug a large nut-filled bucket around the property. I didn't need to hunt for optimized efficiency. I was simply doing yardwork.

For the second time, I have written a complete first draft of a novel.

My first novel was a project I had worked on for four years, finishing in December of 2022. It was strictly character-driven, bildungsroman in nature, and didn't revolve around a central plot. When I finished the first draft, I had it printed and I purchased a few red pens, preparing to edit and begin my second draft shortly after.

Skipping forward a bit, I began writing a second novel sometime in the spring of 2023. This story was much more plot-driven, loosely based on a personal experience I had and wanted to explore as a mental exercise in novelization. I finished the first draft of this novel just last month. Once again, I printed the novel out, preparing for self edits and to soon begin my second draft.

I've come to the realization that I don't know how to approach second drafts.

I didn't take any creative writing courses in college, nor in high school. My approach to fiction writing has always been similar to my nonfiction writing—a style I have built my career around—and rely on my countless hours of reading fiction to help me through. I've started to take a step back from looking at the words on the page and instead read and learn what makes a great novel great. More importantly, I've started to find advice on how to approach second drafts.

Up to just a few weeks ago, I thought second drafts were very similar to the first, but with more consistent and cleaner language. This has turned out to be incredibly incorrect. Instead, I've started to take a step back and look at my novel from a broader lens, with this second draft going to be about structure. Are my chapters in the correct order? Is the climax coming too early? Is this following any form of narrative structure? In future drafts, I can look at how my characters themselves are developed, what makes them different from each other, etc...

This focus on word choice has plagued my writing for years. It wasn't until I heard a great piece of advice on writing that I was even able to finish my first draft: the first draft is all about telling yourself the story; get it out of your head. This is what helped me write a novel in two years instead of four like my first. Now, I need to take more advice on second drafts so I can hopefully move on and not have a stack of first drafts in ten years from now.

This evening, the Data Visualization Society announced both the departure of its current executive director as well as its financial deficit of $35,000. As the Managing Editor of Nightingale, the Journal of the Data Visualization Society, I have some thoughts.

Firstly, a note on its leadership departure. I first met Christopher Laubenthal in February of 2024, the same month I began my tenure as Managing Editor. He just began regularly publishing with Nightingale a few months prior, but together, I assisted him in publishing a dozen pieces over the course of a year. In that time, we formed a great working relationship, which only extended when he took over at the Executive Director of DVS in January 2025. I genuinely believe being the Executive Director of DVS is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs in our industry and he did it with class and professionalism. I appreciated all he did and aimed to accomplish. While I'm sure him and I will continue to collaborate in varying capacities in the future, I appreciated how he approached and fulfilled the role during his tenure.

The relationship between the Data Visualization Society and the Nightingale Editorial Team can be complicated—one where financials are a regular point of contention. The value of Nightingale varies depending on who you ask—it serves as a publishing entry point for incoming data visualization writers, its print magazine is an expensive art project, it represents a collaborate voice in the data visualization community, it fills a void in print publications for the data visualization community, it's how people find the data visualization community; it is some of these things, all of these things, it is something else. In the end, the conversation often ended with the agreement that Nightingale is expensive, but the disagreement of whether or not it's worth it.

At the moment, while Nightingale Digital continues to thrive by reaching its audience of 26,000 monthly readers, Nightingale Print remains on hold after producing its fifth issue, delivered to readers in 58 countries. It should not be a surprise to anyone even relatively close to Nightingale Print that it is riddled with logistical issues, and it's these issues that make it not only unpredictable to produce, but expensive—roughly $60,000 per print run. The profits from the print run account for 22% of DVS's revenue, which is a figure that makes it valuable but requires a hefty upfront cost, a cost DVS cannot regularly provide, being nearly double the current yearly financial deficit of the organization with an expectation to produce two issues a year of Nightingale Print.

The challenges facing Nightingale Print are significant, stemming from the fundamental reality that neither DVS nor Nightingale operates as a dedicated publishing house. The responsibilities of printing, distribution, and storage are currently fractured across various international vendors, creating a logistical quagmire that inflates costs and hinders predictability. This situation presents a difficult paradox for Nightingale: we could achieve a more streamlined and cost-effective print operation by partnering with a seasoned publishing house capable of consolidating all these functions. However, such a move would inevitably entail ceding some of our creative autonomy and potentially a degree of ownership from the DVS. As the Journal of the Data Visualization Society, we deeply value our role as its authentic voice. This is not just a preference, but a fundamental aspect of our identity and value to the community, and indeed, to the DVS itself. For better or worse, we are inextricably linked.

This brings us to a particularly precarious moment. As the Managing Editor of Nightingale, I find myself standing at a confluence of uncertainty. On one hand, Nightingale's continued existence and ability to serve the data visualization community are undeniably bolstered by its home within the largest professional organization for our field. This affiliation lends us credibility and reach, allowing us to be a consistent platform for the vibrant discourse and innovative work that defines our discipline.

On the other hand, Nightingale is not merely a beneficiary; we are a vital, if at times challenging, component of the DVS's own ecosystem. Our current and potential contribution to their revenue is substantial, and our journal represents a significant public face, a tangible output that showcases the DVS's intellectual engagement and commitment to the community. To imagine one without the other feels less like an option and more like a significant loss for both, and for the broader data visualization world we collectively aim to foster.

You don't always know where inspiration finds you, but sometimes it slaps you in the face.

I've been a fan of Manu's writing and projects for the past eight months or so, particularly his "People and Blogs" series. I've been slowly exiting social media for some time and this series helped reinvigorate my love of RSS feeds, independent blogs, and personal websites. This made it all the more exciting when I read back in April that Manu was taking over blogroll.org.

I had not heard of blogroll.org prior to Manu becoming the new custodian of the site, but I found the concept of a simple, sleek, well-organized collection of blogs highly valuable for discovering new voices. So much so, I took my inspiration from blogroll.org and made a more niche version for blogs and newsletters dedicated to data visualization.

For nearly a year, Jason and I have spoken about a lack of space for the data viz community, with people constantly in-flux for where they call social media home, and Slack/Discord servers are becoming less active by the week. As a result, it's hard to keep up with your favorite designers and thought leaders while newer voices have no place to share their own thoughts.

Last week, after another conversation about the data viz community no longer having a space, something clicked and I remembered blogroll.org, seeing an immediate opportunity to build something similar, and ideally, begin to help solve a problem.

I'll go into technical details on the project page, but in short: VizDex was created within 72 hours and has already received a fair amount of contributions to making it grow.

I want this project to serve as a place for people to discover new voices, rediscover veteran voices, and possibly start their own platform for sharing ideas.

I'm proud of this project, being only my second website designed using explicitly web code—as opposed to builders like WIX, WordPress, Squarespace—with the other being this site. I'm always taking recommendations and suggestions on how to improve VizDex, so feel free to reach out if you have an idea.

Last week, I was in a new room for the first time, introducing myself to more than a dozen unfamiliar faces. This wasn't for work—it was a social, though still professional, gathering of sorts—and introductions were happening individually. I was introducing myself over and over again, making small talk but also learning more about each individual over the course of 90 minutes.

Unexpectedly, I found the act of introducing myself—more specifically, how I introduced what I do for a living—challenging. It is often the case that my introduction is tailored to the room I'm in. If I'm at a wedding, I introduce myself as the relationship to which I have with the couple. If I'm at a work function, I introduce myself as my job title. In this case, I had no such starting point.

Do I tell them my job title? No, that's kind of a mouthful. Do I tell them my industry? Well, that varies based on the job I'm talking about.

Ultimately, I settled on, "I work in communications." This was broad enough which lent itself to a follow up question more often than not, in which I could clarify further. Sometimes this sufficed, but on two occasions, people appeared more confused by my response. But in my mind, it makes perfect sense to introduce myself as working in communications, even though that term does not appear in any of my job titles.

To me, everything I do is communications.

At Temple, I am taking data—numbers and raw information—and communicating what they mean to a wide array of audiences in varying departments. At Nightingale, I am working with data visualization professionals and aiding them in communicating what their visual, message, or story means. A large chunk of my career has been spent designing websites and logos—communicating a story visually—as well as working in public relations, which is very on-the-nose for communications work.

I don't give them this full explanation if granted the opportunity to expand beyond, "I work in communications," but I do like having this umbrella to sit under. I don't always feel like, 'data analyst,' 'publication editor,' or 'graphic designer' accurately place me in a box to check, nor do I want to fit into one of those individually.

To be honest, I preferred when I wasn't asked about my job at all, and instead could tell them I own several dozen chickens and collect animation memorabilia.

The month of April and most of May were busy—consistent weekends including dinners, a wedding, events, and overtime. To make up for it, we've used the past few weeks to take time for ourselves.

We found a two-mile community walking path near our house, I've taken Victoria hiking for the first time on the Appalachian Trail, and we've tried to unplug as much as possible.

I like to tell people that I grew up on one side of the Pocono Mountains and currently live on the other. I mean this both geographically and metaphorically. I grew up on the side where houses were spaced farther apart; you were 30 minutes away from most grocery stores, and you were surrounded by hiking trails and waterfalls. Now, I'm 10 minutes away from most grocery stores, but most hiking trails and waterfalls have been replaced with farmland and fairgrounds.

I have a deep love for both, but for the past few weeks of incorporating more hiking and walking into our daily activities, it has felt much less like an either-or when it comes to which side of the Poconos I get to enjoy.

This site has been hosted and built using a number of sites and platforms. From 2015 - 2021, this site was hosted on WIX, with the designs mostly done by scratch using a blank template. This was fine for a while, I was more interested in the design aspect of web design, anyway.

In 2021, I switched over to Webflow. This was a space where I could do more advanced animations and features, while it also serving as a better CMS than WIX. Webflow also allows you to play around with the code more, so while I did very little changing under the hood, I was able to look at it and understand what was happening behind the scenes.

In 2024, I made another switch, this time to Cargo. Cargo was more minimalist and was perfect for what I was looking to do—showcase my work in a straight-forward way while not being too flashy. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before I wanted to leave Cargo; not for another platform, but to design my site from scratch.

Similar to Webflow, Cargo allows you to look under the hood and see all the source code for your website. While you can't export it, you can copy and paste, tweaking from there—this is what I did. In a race-against-the-clock to design my code before my yearly subscription renewed, I began building my site on my local device, preparing to have it hosted on GitHub Pages.

My coding experience prior to this was a few contracted jobs which required me edit preexisting HTML and CSS on a client's website; never building from scratch. Sure, Cargo helped with the CSS, but much of the HTML had to be completely redone. This wasn't a deal breaker because I planned on giving my site some visual tweaks anyway.

The HTML was pretty straight forward, since my site doesn't utilize anything too complex—it's entirely HTML and CSS other than the content filter on my portfolio page which uses some JavaScript. This meant I could simply lay out everything I wanted to and, with my Cargo site on one side of my monitor and my in-development site in the other, I could look at both, see what was off, and tweak the code. I did this over and over again until it was a near identical mirror of each other.

From here, I wanted to edit the design a tad. Primarily the header—I previously didn't have a header, and instead have a few navigation buttons on the bottom of each page. For this site, I wanted to bring it back up to the top and feature my logo, as well. I also wanted to add some additional features I couldn't have in Cargo, such as a filterable portfolio page and an RSS feed for my blog posts. This is something so simple, I'm surprised Cargo didn't have it, but as I've spent most of the past year leaving social media and switching to RSS feeds, I wanted to join in on the fun, as well.

Once I was done, I just had to host on GitHub and connect my custom domain. This wasn't too difficult, despite having never used GitHub before. Within two hours—most of that time waiting for my domain to verify the DNS record—I was all set.

Now what?

The site is still not done, but I don't think any website is ever done. I have a wishlist of features and things to tweak:

1. Updating the slugs so they don't include '.html'
2. Making the home page a bit more visually appealing
3. Cleaning up some code I threw together, but could benefit from more cohesive organization

I'm proud of this site and how far it's come, despite it looking like something a first-semester web design student might design for their final project. If you're someone who has thoughts on how I could improve this site, please reach out.

There are expectations in internships to make an impression in the short time you have, getting a case study out of it if you’re lucky. Your first job will have goals you should hit at the 30, 60, and 90-day marks. If you want a promotion out of that entry-level position, the first year will be spent trying to prove yourself more so than veterans around you. The need to impress is thought of outwardly, focusing less so on what you think of yourself and instead center around what others think of you and how much you can achieve in a certain period of time. Maybe there are awards for breakout stars or age-based recognitions, both of which come with cutoff times for when you can earn them.

I have spent the majority of my 20s racing against these clocks, constantly trying to prove myself with little regard for whether I was getting any personal satisfaction from it, instead caring about how or if others were satisfied with me. More recently, I’ve been able to ignore the clock and focus on how I perceive my work more so than how others may.

The past decade has been spent striving for what was next. Completed internship? Great, go get another and prove yourself again. Got a job? Congrats, now work even harder to keep it. Others going to grad school? Well, go get a masters too and finish at the top of your cohort.

Each of these steps were accompanied by an imaginary timer I put there myself. Now, I’m feeling that timer less and less. I no longer feel the need to expand my résumé in terms of quantity, instead concentrating on doing well in my current position while also aiming for personal satisfaction in the work I’m doing. I’m able to sit back, take a deep breath, and just appreciate where I’ve come from and how I got here.

Two things you should know about where I was one year prior to the time of writing this, when I first took the role over from the extremely talented Emily Barone:

1. I had never worked as an editor before
2. I had only entered the field of data visualization two years prior

How I came into the role

My professional background is largely in communications—both written and visual. I have been paid for my writing in some capacity since 2016, and the rest of the time has been spent designing brand assets—logos and websites—and developing public relations and marketing campaigns. The whole time, I was the one being edited; I had not once picked up the metaphorical red pen for anyone other than myself.

It always causes a chuckle when I say this to colleagues, but I discovered the world of data visualization on TikTok during the COVID lockdowns. Given the extra time I had, being between projects and full-time work, I threw myself into the community; my real introduction to which was through Nightingale.

After reading the thoughts of many great data visualization minds, I decided to take a shot at writing a piece for submission in early 2022. I wrote Designing for Neurodivergent Audiences, with Mary Avilas as the then-Nightingale Managing Editor. The whole experience was such a positive one, I found myself writing more and more, being invited as a columnist in early 2023. During this time, not only did I work with Emily Barone on articles related to lost stories of data viz, but I began learning the inner workings of Nightingale, including its print publication.

By the end of 2023, Emily informed me she would be stepping down as Managing Editor and recommended I try to fill the very large shoes she was leaving behind; my words, not hers. I humbly accepted, having just finished my masters program in data analysis and visualization, and being left with both a lot of extra time and a desire to stay closely connected with those in data viz.

Looking back at year one

There’s a lot to look back on. First, the challenges I faced being a first time editor:

1. I struggled (and still do, though not as much) with balancing between over-editing, making pieces feel a bit more like myself than the author, and under-editing, making pieces feel a little too different from one another, sacrificing a unified Nightingale voice
2. Keeping in mind the varying level of data viz and writing experience a contributor has, needing to be ready to either assist or hone-in a piece based on such
3. While the editorial team is exactly that—a team—there was a great deal of expectation to roll with individual ideas and set both standards and identity

Secondly, here are a few key takeaways from year one:

1. I had the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from some of the names and thought leaders in data viz; ones I only learned about in textbooks, now casually chatting with about slow cooker recipes and pie charts over Zoom
2. There are a lot of branches of data viz—design & technical, academic & practitioners—all of them finding a place to publish in Nightingale; collaborating on vastly different topics of interest week-to-week
3. Working in such a key role for a publication which reaches 26,000 monthly readers holds a lot of influence, which can both be scary and rewarding when helping to develop articles—a few going on to receive views in the hundreds of thousands and enabling genuine conversation about the future of the field

Lastly, I wanted to share some of the articles I am extremely proud of seeing come together this first year (in no particular order):

1. Good Morning Data #1 | The Mystery Job by Julie Brunet aka datacitron
2. Data Design in Focus: Students Review Diverse Installations at Venice Biennale 2023 by David Skopec
3. Visualizing Music Through Data: Are The Most Popular Ghost Songs Statistically More Metal? by Mackenzie Mercer
4. Facing Shyness with Data Art by Victor Muñoz
5. Visualizing Meth Addiction: Data Reveals The Truth About Methamphetamine Addiction in The US by Poe Bertholon

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As I mentioned, this was not my first year with Nightingale, just in this role. I can’t say the same for Teo Popescu and Alejandra Arevalo. Both took on new roles in their first years with the publication, as Content Editor and Interactives Editor respectively. In Teo’s case, she took over our print publication during a particularly daunting and painfully difficult print cycle riddled with logistical nightmares. Alejandra carved out this new role for herself, launching a series of interactive articles for our digital publication, highlighted best, I believe, by this piece in collaboration with the University of Washington.

Of course, I can’t also publicly thank Jason Forrest, Nightingale's Editor-in-Chief, whom of which served as an invaluable mentor to me in year one, and Julie Brunet, Nightingale's Creative Director, a genuine collaborative partner and inspiration.

Where we go from here

Nightingale is changing, and 2025 will be a pivotal year in the publication’s five-year history. Change can be scary, but there is an excellent team behind it all and every decision made will provide more value and opportunity to our fiercely loyal and supportive community. I don’t want to share too much too early, but know: exciting things are happening.

In an era where national news dominates so much of the online landscape, it’s easy to feel like every story has a direct impact on your life. Yet, the sheer scale of these issues—and the distance between us and the decision-makers—often makes national news feel abstract. That abstraction can quickly turn into frustration.

One way to counteract this feeling is to shift your focus to local politics, where your actions can have a tangible impact. For instance, if your local library isn’t receiving enough funding, attending a city council meeting can help bring attention to the issue. If empty lots in your area are turning into dumping grounds, a town hall discussion might spark solutions. And if you’re considering donating funds, local nonprofits often deliver more immediate and visible results than large national organizations.

While patriotism has its place, there’s something uniquely powerful about taking pride in your community. It’s a way to support the people around you and remind yourself that your voice—and your actions—matter.

“Did you join Bluesky?

“Are you going to download RedNote?”

In the past two weeks, I don’t think I have gone a day without the topic of online communities and/or the current state of social media being brought up. I’ve had conversations with people who have built online communities, and those who just enjoy being a part of them; in both cases, they’re seeing their homes be turned upside down.

I started engaging as part of online communities in 2012. I was an active member within Nerdfighteria and Micro Marching League. At the time, the majority of Nerdfighteria was found on Tumblr, while Micro Marching League was most active on the site’s self-hosted forums. In both cases, there was a home, a central hub for community members of old and new to engage. Now, largely in-part due to the oversaturation of social media platforms and the fatigue we are feeling from it, it’s hard to know where online communities are calling home nowadays.

For online community members, this can be hard to know where to begin engaging with others. Reddit remains to be the leader in online forums, seeing the most consistent userbase growth over a large period of time compared to other social platforms. Some communities are turning to Discord, though this is slightly gatekept, not having a public place to explore. For Nerdfighteria, I have long since exited Tumblr and don’t engage with the community nearly as much as I used to, excluding the occasional comment section under a Vlogbrothers episode. Micro Marching League’s forum is a shell of what it once was, but the community is attempting to rebuild themselves in a community-run Discord server.

For those who have started online communities, they are facing record-number departures and dwindling engagement as many leave for other platforms or are too fatigued to remain active members. I’m part of two nonprofits with engaged online communities. The first exists on Slack, and a community that once had 20,000+ members, now sees an average of two posts/day. The other also used Slack, but after their 60-member community became nearly silent, they attempted to start a Discord server to bring in new members; a move that has yet to see promising results.

These are not isolated incidents—people don’t know where to post and engage with others. I hear the same questions over and over: “Have you left Twitter, yet?” “Did you move to Bluesky?” “How about Mastodon?” “Oh, you’re sticking with Instagram?” “You deleted your Facebook entirely?” “I want to delete my social media but don’t want to abandon all the content I’ve made over the years.”

I’ve made the move to blogging and reading RSS feeds. I did this because a) I have social media fatigue from joining and testing a number of social media platforms over the past six months, b) I want control over the content I put out, and there’s no better way than hosting it on a personal website, c) RSS feeds prevent me from wasting hours on an infinite scroll and d) I’ve surprisingly found a stronger community through this approach than I have the past few years on social media. It started when I came across Manu's People and Blogs series. This series led me down a rabbit hole of other bloggers, getting a taste of their work and then adding my favorites to an RSS feed. I’ve been able to engage with people on their personal websites and people have been able to find me through mine.

There was a time in internet history when blogs and message boards were king for online communities, but after social media’s 20-year grasp on trying to provide us homes for content and conversation, it’s hard to remember the alternative—a more simplistic, genuine approach to meeting others online. Maybe it’s time we all pause on searching for a new home for our communities, and instead work on building our own.

For the better part of a decade, I’ve been working on finishing and publishing a novel. I have a completed first draft of one, which is currently shelved, and a near-complete first draft of a second. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on the latter. The novel I’m working on has been restarted a number of times. I’ve changed the perspective, starting point, and tone multiple times. Unfortunately, I’ve found myself not doing this because I think it will make the story better, but because it will make me sound like someone else—a Pulitzer or Booker Prize winner. Once, I read an online forum where people swore up and down that only immature writers use first perspective to tell a story. That night, I started rewriting the draft, following the same tale, but from third person.

In the past month, I’ve heard two great pieces of writing advice: (1) just keep writing (2) stop trying to sound like somebody else. Both have greatly improved my outlook on my own writing.

Just keep writing

Don’t stop to go back and read from the beginning until it’s over. The first draft of a novel is you telling yourself the story. Don’t pause your progress to return and fix a subplot or dialogue. Instead, if you must, make a separate list of things to return to once you’ve completed the first draft. If you don’t like the dialogue between two characters, note it to fix later. If a scene should be added to make two story points flow better, note it to fix later.

When I first heard this piece of advice, I couldn’t help but think of the George R.R. Martin conversation had with Stephen King:

Martin: How the fuck do you write so many books so fast? I think, "Oh, I've had a really good six months, I've finished three chapters." And you've finished three books in that time.

King: Here's the thing, okay? There are books, and there are books. The way that I work, I try to get out there and I try to get six pages a day. So, with a book like End of Watch, and ... when I'm working I work every day--three, four hours, and I try to get those six pages, and I try to get them fairly clean. So if the manuscript is, let's say, 360 pages long, that's basically two months work. ... But that's assuming it goes well.

Martin: And you do hit six pages a day?

King: I usually do.

Martin: You don't ever have a day where you sit down there and it's like constipation? And you write a sentence and you hate the sentence, and you check your email and you wonder if you had any talent after all? And maybe you should have been a plumber? (Laughs) Don't you have days like that?

King: No. I mean, there's real life, I could be working away, and something comes up and you have to get up ... but mostly I try to get the six pages in.

Our own voice

We know our story better than anyone else, and we very might well know how to tell it better than anyone else, too. What I used to do was read the works of my favorite authors—Henri Bosco, Mark Z. Danielewski, Hanya Yanagihara—and try to mimic not their pacing or other valuable elements, but their tone. This was a bad idea for a number of reasons: it wasted my time trying to match their tone, combining their styles made for a not-so-great, hodge-podge of a reading experience, losing my own voice in the process.

I think this came down to a lack of confidence in my own writing. I wanted to sound like a great writer, so I tried to mimic great writers, when I should have just been looking for inspiration to better my own work.

When I stopped trying to replicate and relied on my own style, my own voice, I found myself writing so much faster. I was soaring through a first draft the way some others do. Not saying speed is a necessary factor in writing a first draft—Donna Tartt would greatly disagree with this notion, taking a decade between each novel—but I like that I’m not wasting time on replication, rather telling myself the story in the way I want to hear it.

Many say there are no such things as original thoughts anymore, everything is pulling inspiration from something else. Whether you believe it or not, there is an oversaturation of content being sent out into the public sphere, and it’s hard to have an idea you haven’t at least seen a few similarities within elsewhere. For a lot of writers, we want to create a work which goes beyond us. At least for me, I like the idea of having a work that is taught critically in classrooms. I don’t strive for financial gain as much as I do cultural longevity. Is this bold and pretentious? Probably at least a little. Maybe I’m just chasing that high of winning the Best Writer Award more than twice in grade school.

I’ve previously written about how my career started in one place, and as I’ve explored new realms, I’ve unlocked new areas of interest.

Starting off as a communications major in community college, I was fascinated with, theoretically, how people communicate and share stories with each other. This led me to majoring in public relations, sticking with storytelling but doing so verbally and through written language. I then discovered data visualization, which is finding stories in large data sets and communicating said information with diverse audiences.

Now, this is where I’ve started to deviate a bit more in the past year.

Most certainly influenced by my friends who are more tech-centered—combined with being around data all day long—I’ve found myself with a deepening interest in data archiving and database systems. Do I have any background in server infastructure or data systems? No. But I’ve started to focus some time and energy into learning more about them.

I started by tinkering with a ZimaBlade 7700 and building a home media server, digitizing my physical media. This taught me some basic Linux and data infastructure. I’ve started to expand, using server space to create a home NAS and learn more about how different devices on the network can engage with it. Next, I want to expand by possibly building a custom setup and playing around with Linux. Am I focusing in the wrong areas? Any advice? Reach out, I’m always happy to hear people out.

While I’ve certainly deviating from my storytelling path, I’m excited to be going in a direction I’ve never stepped foot in. I’ve been a creative all my life, so when I went into a creative-driven career, it wasn’t that big of a stretch. This is completely new to me. But you know what Shakespeare said: “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.“