Pruning Weak Links and Other Best Practices [Days 26-29]

I’m cheating a bit by posting multiple days on the same day, I know. But it was kind of an intense weekend because I decided to cut one of my favorite projects currently on the docket. It was just taking too much energy and had limited interest in its market. So, on Day 26, I cut it.

This resulted in a change of my color palette — one I’m fairly certain most will consider an upgrade. I know I do. I’m trading out the smoky black for a great green.

It’s a strong change and I’m excited to see what will become of it.

For now, however, here are the posts for each day, in descending order:

Sheralyn Pratt 29/365
Mint leaves

Here’s the new green and me toying with how I might use it on a future product.

Sheralyn Pratt. 28/365.
Color palette

Here’s the new color palette. I picked the colors out of paint sample colors since I’m pretty sure I might be doing some painting in the future.

Sheralyn Pratt 27/365.
The think about killing darlings before they see the light of day is that no one gets to mourn them but their creator... and some darlings really deserve more than a funeral for one.

This is me being melodramatic about shelving my idea after 2 weeks of putting gas in the tank and not getting much movement.

Timing isn’t everything but it can definitely make or break how well something is received. And, sometimes, you’ve just got to read the tea leaves on how things are being received and pluck things when they’re ripe.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Sheralyn Pratt 26/365
The funny thing about stories is they're all impossible whether they're true or not.

This was just looping in my head on this day. So I share it with you. Feel free to share an exception to me, but the more I think on it the more it seems accurate.

Once Upon This One Time…

by: Sheralyn Pratt

Once upon this one time, I was walking my dog at night. We were going along our usual path at about our usual time. The world around us was fast asleep; the houses were dark and you could hear a pin drop in the street.

Everything was quite usual this night, except maybe just one thing: I’d felt the urge to walk our usual path in reverse, so we were taking our route in the opposite direction.

We’d just taken the first of two turns that would point us back home when, out of nowhere, a voice said, “It should occur to you to be concerned right now,” and it took a moment to realize the voice was just in my head.

But I answered it anyway, saying, “Oh? Why is that?”

“Because of the man in the van.”

“The man in the van?” I asked, eyes searching around. Yet I was passing between a home and a wall of high bushes, so all I could see were a tunnel of leaves and the side of a house.

“Yes,” the voice replied. “There is a man in the van on the other side of this bush. And it should occur to you to be concerned.”

And, so it was that I became concerned and, as I stepped beyond the bush I glanced back.

Sure enough, there was a white van parked in perfect alignment with the tunnel-sized bush in a way that seemed quite intentional, but not red-flag suspicious.

It was quite dark and the nearest street light did little to illuminate the inside of the vehicle. But, when I looked at the outline of the two front seats, all I saw were the outline of the two front seats.

“It’s just a van,” I told myself. “No man.” And the moment I thought these words, I heard the metal-on-metal rat-ta-ta-tat of a car seat reclining – loud as a drum in the still of night.

With the noise, the outline of the driver’s side seat disappeared and the distant street light shone through the back window and into my view.

There was definitely someone in the van. And they had definitely noticed me glancing back for a peek and tried to hide while making the absolute loudest of creaks.

There was really no way to ignore the sound, but I made a go of it anyway.

I kept walking, making it about 30 more feet before I heard the car seat return to its upright position just before the engine started – followed by headlights on full-bright, making it useless to look for the person inside.

I kept walking as this white van from the 20th century – maybe a Dodge Caravan – raced me to the corner. The air felt charged as the man rubbernecked as he passed, then sped down the street with a single tail light doing nothing to illuminate a darkened license plate.

When he reached the end of the street, did a full-stop at the stop sign, belatedly signaled, turned right, and was gone.

As I replayed everything in my mind to make a best guess if all threat was past, the voice added, “Sometimes, it’s good to come at things from an opposite view.”

Then it disappeared as quickly as the van and I was left with my thoughts as I walked my dog home – rarely to walk the same path again.