Yesterday was a great day. In the morning, a friend of mine texted to say that he was walking his dog past my apartment and asked if Jonnie Bongos (my alter ego—don’t ask) could come to the window. I immediately ran to the front window and saw him! As soon as he looked up and noticed me waving, he screamed out, “JONNIE BONGOS!”. We waved for a brief moment, then that was that. In this new world of isolation, that was the greatest gift I could’ve received.

Later that afternoon, the news got even better—a friend and studio mate of mine offered to let us use his washer and dryer. He and his family live only two blocks away, but they escaped to Massachusetts a few weeks back to be with his parents. As long as we water their plants, we have a place to wash our clothes and bedding. This seems so silly, but it meant the world to me. And the timing couldn’t have been better. That morning, our cat human-puked all over our bed, so we washed it as well as we could in the tub, but it really needed a proper washing. We were also dangerously close to running out of clean clothes, so the thought of that not being an impending issue took a huge weight off my shoulders.

While I washed our clothes that night, I spent a few hours with Cushion—specifically thinking about how I could smooth out its rough edges and simplify the more complex parts. I keep needing to remind myself that it’s a good product that I should be proud of, but I also feel determined to plug the many holes in its bucket. It felt amazing to spend several hours just designing. I work on stripe.com all day, specifically coding marketing pages, so switching to product design with Cushion on the side has been great for maintaining a healthy variety.