Welcome!
Hey, thanks for dropping by :)
I’ve been thinking about making a Substack for a while and eventually decided to just go for it.
In the words of my astonished masters supervisor after I dropped a 70 page draft comprising just the discussion section of my thesis onto her desk, “you write to think.“ And yet, these days I never give that writing, and therefore that thinking, the room to breath outside of the half-baked, typo-ridden text messages to my friends.
My hope for Parking Lot Pickup is that it will structure my writing practice again, and give me space to more fully flesh out the thoughts in my head at any given time. Most of the content will relate to my professional interests - design thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and facilitation - but I’m sure other topics will get woven in over time as well.
Why ‘Parking Lot Pickup?’
A parking lot is a place where you put thoughts and ideas that you want to hold on to, but aren’t relevant to the current task at hand. It’s a place to keep them safe and acknowledge their value while staying focused. Sometimes it’s physical: a section of the wall or table where you can stick post-its or scrawl a note with a dry erase marker. Other times it’s a makeshift spot like a page in your Notes app or the margin of a notebook.
While having a place to put your thoughts and ideas in the moment is great to keep moving, it’s all too easy to forget to circle back. Revisiting the parking lot to process and sort through the miscellaneous thoughts takes time and intention that can be hard to give. Yet it’s a key activity in making sure that projects are thought through and collaborators are heard.
Similarly, Parking Lot Pickup is my space for following up on the thoughts that pop up throughout the day that are more related to the process aspects of my work rather than the content. How decisions are made, how projects progress, and the effects of institutional norms on people and outcomes.
Why subscribe?
Right now, my intent is that almost all, if not all, of my content will be ungated for the time being, since what I’m really looking for at the moment is structure and accountability, and to share my reflections with folks who might find them interesting. I might play around with this a little, perhaps putting more random or personal things behind the paywall. But for now it exists more as a tip system to support me if you wish. The subscription level is as low as Substack allowed me to to to keep it accessible.
