I was exhausted…
I had played the entire first half, and started the 2nd half. Now we were maybe five? Ten? Minutes away from the game ending. I remember looking over to coach hoping to see him motion for me to switch out. Minute after minute goes by, no motion, not even a look in my direction. What gives? *whistle* Finally.
On the car ride home I’m complaining to my father about not getting a second of rest, how it’s not fair. He tells me that he did ask, he wanted to know why his son had to play the entire game with no breaks. The answer he received was, “I know that Tony’s exhausted. But he draws multiple defenders to him. The team needs him on the field. He creates opportunity.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel all that tired.
What I create
I often found it quite difficult to explain what I bring to teams. For the longest time, I would default to speaking about the work. My design processes, my efficiencies. But that’s repeated throughout my project showcases. I realized that I had been leaving out an entire part of what I bring that is tough to measure. Team culture.
I create safe, supportive environments. Spaces where we celebrate each other as intensely as we support each other. I create the opportunity for every single person to shine and be their best self.
Follow along
Everything I’m working on is entirely viewable by the public. This Figma file contains the design system I’ve built for myself, alongside the various components I’m going to be using throughout this experience. If you see me working in that file make sure to say hi!
You can also see my version history on GitHub and get glimpse of how I’m using style-dictionary to convert my primitives and semantics .json to tokens that I use to maintain consistency and make updating styles a breeze.
11ty is my site generator of choice, and everything is deployed through Netlify.