Once you face them, some storms seem impossible to cross. The past few weeks have been that kind of storm. On the personal side, I’ve gone through so much turbulence that it’s hard to believe it all happened in a month. I lost my dearest grandmother without the chance to kiss her goodbye—and a cousin in a contested case of suicide closed by the Swiss police. I also learned of a mobility issue my father has been facing for months: he has a degenerative neurological disease, and it will only get worse.
It’s strange to think about now, as I write it down. It looks unreal, and yet it happened, and I came through it—not least because I had work to do along the way.
Back in April, I started to think about the WordPress default theme. I had the honor of being chosen to bring it to life, and from the first moment I was worried about delivering something worthy of it. As I mentioned before, revisiting the Odyssey had sparked many ideas, and one of them became the theme’s title once I heard we should set the name Twenty Twenty-Seven aside, since there had been no Twenty Twenty-Six. It was time to rescue Odysseus’ main characteristic in Homer’s epic.
I worked on it for months, shared it internally, presented it to Matt, then waited for feedback and direction.
Mētis was well received, but Matt had a point. In his view, the default theme should be much simpler this time, and that big, plural design should become something else, like a flagship theme. It was a change of course, and a bittersweet one: the work was solid, but for a release this important, something completely new would have to take its place. I was glad the work had landed well, but I wasn’t relieved. Once again, I was worried—this time about the new one.
In the middle of this, the storm broke—the one I opened with. At first, I didn’t think I would hold. Then I asked the Stoic apprentice in me: “What can you do about that?”
I talked to people as much as I could. I booked a flight to Brazil to stay with my grandmother, who wasn’t well, and to better understand my father’s situation. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it in time. She died five days before I was due to arrive. But I went anyway—one week, flying in and driving 900 km by myself to reach my hometown. And kept designing the blank-canvas default theme we would later call Ipsum. With a hard deadline approaching and a mind that needed something else to occupy it, that turned out to be the best route to take.
I presented it during my days in Brazil and got the go-ahead; here’s the announcement post. I did it, and I managed to be present for the people I love, making all I could to make their situation bearable once I’d left.
I did what was under my control, kept true to my principles, and held fast as the ship crossed the tempest. The storm looks no smaller from this side, but I’ve crossed it. And this is my advice if you ever find yourself in a similar situation: grab onto something, and don’t let the wind or the current drag you into a total block.
In memory of Dan Iamarino 🌟
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