Yesterday was my last day at Happy Cog. Today, I’ve started my own practice again.

...so, yeah. That paragraph doesn’t do much for, you know, context, does it? Consider that the TL;DR version, and let’s try again:

If you ever talk to me on the phone, you should probably know that I’m a bit of a pacer. I guess I should blame it on the nanosecond-long attention span, but I can’t really sit at my computer when talking to someone at length. More often than not, I’ll simply pace back and forth in the kitchen. Our pearlish-gray kitchen tiles form some rather, well, comforting diagonals, and I’ll just walk along them from one corner of the room to the next. Still not sure why I do it, to be honest. I suppose tracing those pixellated little laps frees my mind a bit, a mundane, repetitive little charm that helps me better focus on the discussion at hand.

Having that routine provides not a little symmetry when a major life change happens. I was walking those elliptical loops when I agreed to join Airbag Industries. And I was making my kitchen laps yesterday when Greg and I had my last phone call as an employee of Happy Cog.

I could say that the decision to leave has been difficult, sure—but that’s one of the most understate-y understatements ever if not, perhaps, the understatiest. I joined a little studio called Airbag Industries over three years ago, and it’s been a wonderful, insane, fantastic ride. After a few years of running a mini-studio of my own, I leapt at the chance to work with Greg and Ryan, two of my favorite (if personal space-challenged) people. From there, we took on incredible projects, watched the team more than triple in size, and eventually officially joined forces with Happy Cog, a studio I’ve admired since first picking up my now dog-eared copy of the orange book.

Throughout my tenure, I’ve been fortunate to work with people who are consistently at the top of their game. And I can’t stress that enough: everyone at Happy Cog is eminently professional, impossibly fun to hang out with, and just stupidly talented. It’s one of the first times that I’ve worked alongside so many craftsmen, if you’ll pardon the lack of an appropriately gender neutral term. Each project was an opportunity to ask ourselves how we could work a little bit better than last time, how to learn from emerging technologies and ideas, and build something truly great. Plus, you know, there was the occasional karaoke bout thrown in for good measure.

Re-reading that last paragraph just underscored how hard it is to leave. But in the past year or so, I’ve been feeling more and more excited about some of the opportunities that have been coming my way. I’ll be rounding out this year’s simply fantastic An Event Apart roadshow with appearances in DC and San Diego, and speaking at Future of Web Design NYC in November. And I’m unbelievably excited to be writing for A Book Apart on responsive web design, working with Jeffrey, Jason, and Mandy to produce a great little book.

So that’s why I’ve decided to leave Happy Cog, and go independent again. As hard as it is to move on, I’m positively exhilarated by the prospect of focusing on writing, speaking, and creating, hopefully with the occasional awesome client project thrown in. If that sounds interesting to you, or even if you’d like to chat a bit about how much Photoshop crashes or your favorite animated GIF, I hope you’ll get in touch.

Over the past few weeks, as my last day at Happy Cog loomed closer, I’ve been thinking about how most of our language around transitions has gotten wrapped up in books. You know: “turning a page,” “the next chapter,” and so forth. And there’s something comfortingly sequential about those phrases: we turn one page, and the next one gains focus. Thing is, the transition isn’t quite as forward-looking as the rhetoric implies: the previous experience shapes us, educates us. We’re always flipping back to a lesson we’ve learned before.

So that’s where I am now. I’ve just turned a page over, and it’s one I’ll sorely miss—but I know I’ll be referring back to it, and often. And in the months ahead, I’m excited to draw from those experiences as I do some writing of my own.

So the contest is over, and it was a blast. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, both on Dribbble and here on the blog. For the Dribbble entries, here’s where the like-tally lay as of 12pm ET:

• With 27 votes, Kyle Jones’ ampersandy sketch of yours truly was deemed stupendous by the Dribbble community. I deem it thus as well, and he’s our Dribbble runner-up.
• 29 votes earned Mr. Craig Henry the prize for his exquisite ampersand rose. Simply beautiful.

But unfortunately, Technology™ and Heart Buttons™ couldn’t do all our work for us: we had to sift through the non-Dribbble entries (and not a few tears of joy) and pick out two entries. It was an incredibly tough review, but here are the two we settled on:

• Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast sent over her weapon of choice, and we judged it awesome. Second runner-up!
• Liz Fulghum’s “City of Baskerville” is our non-Dribbble winner! (Also, we would like to move to there.)

Both Liz and Andrea will be getting Dribbble invites, and both Andrea and Kyle have earned a free copy of Handcrafted CSS. What’s more, Liz and Craig will be getting free passes to our upcoming Handcrafted CSS seminar in Nashville on 21 June.

As for the rest of you, hope you'll be joining us! Early bird registration ends in eleven days, so register early and often. See you in June!

The time has come, the blogger said, to talk of many things: of bits and books and ampersands, of contests and conferenc—okay, yeah. That was stupid.

Moving on:

Dan and I are still hard at work on planning the Handcrafted CSS seminar in lovely Nashville, Tennessee, and we are nearing the end of our early bird registration period: in roughly two weeks, the registration leaps from $449 per ticket to the full $499. That said, we figured we’d reprise our contest from last year, and give away a few free passes.

Here’s the info:

1. Post a rebound (a kind of visual “riff” to you non-Dribbblers) to this Dribbble entry before Friday at noon EST. (Want the PSD? Nab it here.)
2. Don’t have a Dribbble account? No problem! Post it as an entry on your blog, and post a link to your entry as a comment on my blog entry before the cutoff date.
3. We’ll be selecting two winners:
   1. The Dribbble rebound with the most likes.
   2. The non-Dribbble entry that Dan and I subjectively judge to be supremely incredible. (That’s a thing. Honest.)
4. We’ll also be selecting two runners-up:
   1. The Dribbble rebound with the second highest likes.
   2. The non-Dribbble entry that Dan and I subjectively judge to be supremel—I think you can see where this is going.

The winners will each receive one free pass to our lovely conference, which includes a free DVD edition of Handcrafted CSS. The runners-up will each receive a free copy of Handcrafted CSS, along with a copy of Dan’s omgorgeous Bit Monsters letterpress print. And for an added bonus, the non-Dribbble winner and runner-up will both receive a Dribbble invitation.

I imagine your face currently looks something like this right now. So rebound away, get those entries posted, and we hope to see you all at Handcrafted CSS Nashville in June!