In my job as a Product Manager, I make specialized software for internal users in my company. Watching people use it can be so painful.

An example: Look at dashboard view > memorize client name > go to client view > type in client name to search > click to view the client

When they could have just clicked to view the client from the dashboard.

After I finish cringing, I just take it as learnings for how to build/design better in the future.

I had someone send me bullet points in Teams… except they weren’t bullet points or even carriage returns. It was just 50+ spaces at the end of the line to make the text go down to the next line in her view.

She was also a right-click copy/paster.

Ctrl+shift and L/R arrow keys also selects entire words, and up/down selects entire rows. No more taking your hands off the keyboard to select text!

My favorite that I can’t believe not everyone uses is ctrl+backspace to delete a whole word at once. Totally butchered typing something? Start over quickly. Need to delete most of your sentence? Delete it in just a few taps.

Small note: the country name is spelled “Colombia,” and spelling it correctly means you don’t need to specify which one!

At one point in my childhood, my dad made the comment, “Women don’t know compass directions.” I took offense to that and made a point to learn them to prove him wrong.

I felt vindicated in high school when he was coming to pick me up from a friend’s house and said, “I’m at the gas station. Do I go left or right?” I told him there were several gas stations on the way, and asked which direction he was facing to figure out which one he was by. He couldn’t tell me and finally hung up on me in a huff.

I put down my best friend of 20 years on October 5th and fuck it’s hard. I’m sorry. You know you’re making the caring decision and loving your dog until the end though, and that is a gift.

It’s going to be hard. I’m starting to feel like myself again between the moments of deep grief, but I am still fragile and sad and will be for a long time.

If you ever need comfort from a stranger, feel free to save my name or comment and shoot me a message.