What Paul Ford Wrote/Said in 2015

That’s me!

This too.

I saw this list of writers’ years in review and thought it would be interesting to do my own. I’m not sure if I got everything but this must be about 80–90% of it.

January–March

01/21 — How PAPER Magazine’s web engineers scaled their back-end for Kim Kardashian (SFW)
Medium, The Message
Fun to research and write.

02/11 — It’s Kind of Cheesy Being Green
Medium, The Message
Never write about phones.

02/23 — Just Checking In (With Virginia Heffernan)
Medium, The Message
A joy to write and put into the world. One of the three things I (we!) wrote this year that will hold up, I think.

02/27 — Yes to the Dress?
Medium, The Message
Ancient history, now.

03/02 — Untitled
Medium, Self-published
Whatever.

03/03 — WhiskerNet
Medium, self-published
Goofy idea.

03/04 — Busy Social Settings
Medium, self-published
I like to write this way but no one else really cares, so.

03/07 — Notifications & Alerts
Medium, The Message
A silly thing people took too seriously.

03/09 — Apple Watch Liveblog (With Anil Dash)
Medium, The Message
Remember the Apple Watch?

03/31 — My Quantified Email Self Experiment: A failure
Medium, The Message
Another silly thing people took too seriously.

Reviewing this year, I have very little memory of writing most of these, except What Is Code. I’ve been trying to finish a book that explains the web and technology and it has gone terribly. If you’d’ve asked me at any point during the year how I was doing as a writer I would have said that I was blocked, incapable of writing, and miserable about it, in the midst of a huge crisis of confidence the whole damn year.

April–June

04/27 — The Media Industry Prefers Penis
Medium, The Message
Another silly thing people took to seriously.

05/17 — Other People’s Playlists
The New Republic, Big Data
I liked this one.

05/19 — A “No to” Poem
Medium, The Message
I tried to cover something I thought was weird and interesting; it sort of fell flat. It’s an impossible subject for someone like me to write about; I felt like I was just treading where no one wanted me and by the time it was written I regretted writing it.

05/20 — A piece for Elle about “breasts” that never went online
Elle
Kind of glad this one didn’t hit the Internet.

06/01 — What Is Code
Bloomberg Businessweek, Special Issue
This was ridiculous to pull off and I’m proud we pulled it off. Me and 40+ people cranking for weeks to create something novel and weird. All credit to Bloomberg for taking this risk. The paper copies are all sold out (I have about 100 left); the digital version got tons of traffic. Never had anything enter into pop culture at all, even smart-people pop culture, never expect to again. But it was interesting to see.

06/08 — The Last Museum
Vice Media, Motherboard, Terraform
Just a fun, weird piece. I love writing fiction even though I’m perpetually rusty. 2016 will include more fiction.

06/22 — Pax Google
The New Republic, Big Data
Not a bad piece. I like that TNR lets me figure stuff out as I go.

I was doing a lot of writing, but it’s hard to get people to pay writers for things on time. I was doing a bunch of consulting and programming work, started a company, my wife started a full-time job, and we raised our twins from 3.5 to 4.5 years of age. I’ll always write, but when it was my primary income it felt like I was hanging over a cliff. As much as I love-slash-hate the work, I’ll never feel safe relying on it.

July–September

07/18—Health as a Puzzle
Chairs and Tables
Wrote this for some nice Canadians.

07/20 — Fairly Random Thoughts on Ashley Madison & the Swiftly Moving Line
Medium, The Message
Feels like history now.

07/23—Correspondence
Medium, self-published
I still haven’t answered these emails.

08/13 — The Final File
The New Republic, Big Data
Love this database.

09/01 — Saving For A Daughter But Not A Son: This Father Is Starting A Fund To Combat The Wage Gap
Elle
Once I had this idea I couldn’t leave it alone. It pissed off so many people from so many different backgrounds. The big TV morning shows wanted me to come on but I figured I didn’t really want death threats for me and my wife, the Internet comments calling her a whore were bad enough. I love that just by saying you’re going to save some money you can cause people on the left and right to completely lose their shit.

09/23 — Here is Postlight
Postlight Posts (Corporate Blog)
I co-founded a company to build web things. I couldn’t imagine being beholden to publishing any longer; it’s a dangerous industry in that it feeds your narcissism without paying you real money.

09/14 — Data Helped Me Lose 100 Pounds
The New Republic, Big Data
And writing helped me gain it back.

In 2016 I plan to work on some pieces about technology, and write two big pieces of science fiction that have been rattling around in my head for two or three years, and my book should come out (if I can just finish the last 15,000 words right now).

October–December

10/07 — The Chaotic Wisdom of Wikipedia Paragraphs
The New Republic, Big Data
I love Wikipedia paragraphs, simple as that.

11/03 — A bot that does “actuallies”
GitHub

11/04 — LOL Nothing Matters: A Defense of the Internet’s Absence of Meaning
The New Republic, Big Data
I like the word “ephemeralism,” it’s an okay word.

11/16 — A bot that creates ideas for government programs (Source)
GitHub
Just a bot.

11/24 — Helpful Talk Tips!
Postlight Posts (Corporate Blog)
It’s fun to write in this tone. I missed writing copy and hustling.

12/02 — I Dreamed of a Perfect Database
The New Republic, Big Data
I still do dream of said database.

12/07 — Stick a Pin In It
Postlight Posts (Corporate Blog)
Ditto.

12/13 — Unsolicited Rejection
Medium, Self-published
I mean who knows.

Talks, podcasts, etc:

1. Apparently I wrote 6,000+ tweets.
2. Google SPAN conference, New York, NY on “What is Talent” (also gave that talk for First Mark Capital’s Design Driven & CSNYC)
3. HUGE’s Brooklyn 1.0 Design Conference, on “Living Two Lives”
4. Mozilla “View Source” conference, Portland, OR on “The State of the Web”
5. Tomorrow w/Josh Topolsky (~4x)
6. The Charlie Rose Show
7. A bunch of Bloomberg radio and podcasts
8. Kevin Warbach, “The Digital Show,” SiriusFM
9. Maine Public Radio
10. NPR’S “On Point”
11. Digg Dialog re: Wikipedia
12. Reply All (later This American Life)
13. Doree Shafrir’s ReRun
14. Mindful Cyborgs
15. On The Media (on Code and on Ashley Madison)
16. I’m forgetting some

Kills from:

New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, GQ, a couple others