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The lowest highs

I turn 40 tomorrow and pandemic life continues. My immediate family and I all fall within the range of people who have no idea when they'll be able to get vaccinated. I'm doing my best to show up to work every day and pretend to be productive. It's all exhausting.

My partner and I both turned 40 during the pandemic. We did our best to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary too. It was July 31, 2020, so it happened to fall right at the start of the major second wave of COVID-19 infections here in the US. I don't remember that day or what we did at all. Probably mostly the same thing we did July 30. Nothing, really.

My son had his 13th birthday last March. Another big milestone come and gone without being able to celebrate. No sleepovers with his friends, or even a meal out at his favorite restaurant. He turns 14 later this month. It will be the second pandemic birthday of his teenage years.

We've experienced tragedy too. Not really COVID-related tragedy, but the normal everyday kind of tragedy that everyone experiences in "normal" times. We lost a beloved family pet Rocky in a horrific accident. I held him as in my arms as he died, and it's a trauma that will be with me forever. We've had to watch from far away as close friends and family members suffered through extreme and deadly illnesses. No hospital or home visits because of the other extreme and deadly illness floating in the air all around us.

What I keep thinking about is how compressed the difference between highs and lows are through all of this. The highest highs, like birthdays and anniversaries, don't really seem to feel that different from everyday stuff, but the lows, they seem to last forever and can be debilitating. I hope you're all hanging in there. ✌️

Visually hidden snippet

There are several ways to hide content using CSS. For example using display: none, or visibility: hidden. Each way of hiding elements is useful in different situations, but this snippet is specifically for visually hiding elements while keeping the accessible to assistive technologies like screen readers.

.visually-hidden:not(:focus):not(:active) {
  clip: rect(0 0 0 0); 
  clip-path: inset(50%);
  height: 1px;
  overflow: hidden;
  position: absolute;
  white-space: nowrap; 
  width: 1px;
}

Scott O'Hara wrote about this in 2017 including a deep dive into all the different ways you can hide stuff and when to use which method. I'd definitely recommend checking out that article too.

Smaller Better Things

I watched this mini documentary about a French butter maker the other day that makes high-end butter with old techniques that very few places use anymore.

I really like this quote from the owner where he explains that he could make a lot more butter (and more money) if he using newer more automated techniques, but instead he prefers to focus on quality and do less—to make smaller things.

Me, I’m a little good man and I make little things.

I think about this concept a lot these days. The larger a project gets the quicker I find myself losing interest. It’s not that I fear hard work it’s that I just want to do smaller, better work.

Anyway, watch this video about making butter. It appears that it only exists as this Tweet. I couldn't find it on Insider site, so I've embedded it here. Enjoy!

Copyright Snippet

It's that time of year again, so I thought I'd do a quick post on the simple bit of JavaScript I use to keep the copyright date current in the static sites I build. Add the hidden attribute to your container element markup so that if JS fails for some reason it won't display.

class CopyrightElement extends HTMLElement {
  connectedCallback() {
    this.innerHTML = `© ${new Date().getFullYear()}`;
  }
}

if ('customElements' in window) {
  window.customElements.define('copyright-element', CopyrightElement);
}

As a bonus, here's a tiny custom element I made that does the same thing. This way you can just wrap your static text in a tag and as long as the browser is capable and you scripts loaded, you get an upgraded, up-to-date footer copyright date.

(function() {
  document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
    // Update this to whatever selector you want.
    const element = document.querySelector('[data-copyright]');
    if (element) {
      element.removeAttribute('hidden');
      element.innerHTML = `© ${new Date().getFullYear()}`;
    }
  });
})();

We Are The Songwriters

The urge to create can feel like a struggle sometimes. Throw in feelings of isolation and hopelessness brought on by living through a global pandemic and trying to make something to put out into the world can seem impossible some days.

I recently discovered Nick Cave's The Red Hand Files via Austin Kleon's newsletter. I spent a few hours reading through a dozen or so posts. It gave me a real rush of emotion that I think I needed. The questions submitted through the site and his answers to them are heartbreaking, hilarious, and inspiring.

I found the answer to this one called "What do you do when the lyrics just aren’t coming?" very comforting in a lot of ways. This last line at the end put a lump in my throat.

We are all of these things — we are the songwriters.

If you do anything creative for fun, or for a living—and I tend to think lots of folks fall into at least one of those categories—I'd highly recommend giving it a read.