Fonts & Templates

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I'll begin by saying that none of this matters, but it matters to me.

This week, seeking distraction, I opened Google Docs and Microsoft Word and worked on the fonts and styles in my standard templates.

I'll bet you're real excited to keep reading.

Standard templates are the blank document into which one types. Long ago, I decided on page margins (half-inch top and bottom, one-inch side to side) and a font combination (Playfair Display title and headings, Open Sans body text). In this time at home, lacking enough to do, I got to feeling it was time for a new look in Google Docs. Having been switched to Word at work (sigh), I needed a template there too.

This how I keep from checking headlines and watching news briefings.

I played with Segoe UI, Calibri, and others, but returned to Open Sans. I changed sizes, weights, and line spacing. Eventually, I settled on a template for Google and something similar for Word (described below for geeks and freaks). It's the first time I've changed my template in years.

This reminds me of the lined paper I designed years ago and printed at the school system's expense on used sheets of copy paper. This is the paper I use for Morning Pages. I printed maybe a thousand sheets of it prior to leaving the school.

The design of those sheets began simply, but I refined it over years of small changes: I switched from twenty-five to thirty-one lines, added spaces for the date and page number, switched to dotted lines, shrunk the right margin, and added ghostly line numbers. Eventually, it became the page I use today, a page I love using and which, if I were a rich man, I'd have bound into books.

Creating a new template isn't necessary, but the act of tinkering and refining is a good use of _my_time so long as I don't go overboard. The template is a tool of my craft and I'm happy with what I've created and with knowing that I will refine them, maybe today, certainly down the road. Good tools are worthwhile and refining a good tool is a delight.

But when I want to really write I avoid Google Docs and Word in favor of Writer, a minimal, distraction-free editor with almost no control over fonts or templates. I'm drafting and revising this in Writer because I'm trying to write, not present. I've formatted the blog for presentation and can concentrate now on writing and revising.

Font fiddling and template tweaking matters to me because presentation of craft matters. A good template is a good tool but has nothing to do with the craft of writing. Knowing to keep creation and presentation separate, now there's something that matters.

Template Details For Geeks And Freaks

Google Docs

  • Title: Baskerville 30 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 24 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 14 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

Word (Slightly larger, no complementary title font)

  • Title: Open Sans Light 38 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 26 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 22 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

If you've read this far, you're a geek.
If you try these in Google Docs and/or Word, you're my kind of freak.

Paying Attention

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I'm reading a book about paying attention. I read blogs about paying attention. I quit Facebook and Twitter so I would pay better attention. I write three pages every morning to pay attention. I'm typing this in order to pay attention.

Yet I can't seem to pay attention to much of anything right now.

There's the news onslaught, but that's pretty easy to dodge if I choose. I don't have to type nytimes.com, syracuse.com, or npr.org into my browser and they don't appear by magic. I don't listen to the radio and when I watch television it's usually something that I've cast to the screen. The news isn't robbing me of my attention.

My anxieties are. Things are all new. I'm home with my family (wonderful), working remotely (not wonderful), and worried about growing pandemic (really terrible). It's a lot of adjustment and so far I'm not doing great with it.

How about you?

It was nice outside today. I took my book and dog to the backyard. Groucho Marx wisely said that outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. The dog, a terrible reader, chose to roll in the grass. I tried to read my book. It's a tough book and I'm in a tough spot, so it didn't go well. The dog probably could have done better. Maybe I should have rolled in the grass.

My mother says she's in the same boat (mostly about reading, not rolling in the grass). Stuck at home she's trying to read Richard Russo, an author whose books are easy to fall into, but she just can't seem to stay with it.

I suppose we should give ourselves time. It's still early days and though today's sky was blue it still felt as if it was falling.

It's good to remember that while today (Thursday) and Tuesday were terrible days for concentration and attention, Monday and Wednesday were better. Jon Anderson sings I get up, I get down and John Denver says some days are diamonds and some days are stone. Who am I to argue?

I'm sitting in bed typing this. The cat is purring. I'm tired. Once I've posted this I'll have no need to pay attention. I can let go and drift gently to sleep. Tomorrow will be another day, another chance to try my best to pay attention. That's about all I can ask of myself right now.

Ordinary Coffee

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I wrote this a few months ago, back when we were all still going to work. I miss my morning coffee downstairs with Ed who takes good care of the seniors at our community center and me.

At the office, I go downstairs for coffee. There's always a pot on. Folks there prepping for seniors who come to breakfast and stay for lunch. They invite me for a daily cup. I pour and wish them a good day. They wish me a great one.

It’s ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water runs through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness.

Dad kept coffee on all day. A pot in the morning. One after dinner. When anyone came to visit. When the guys were over to work a funeral. When he went out late to a house, hospital, or nursing home to retrieve the dead and help the living find their way again.

Just ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness.

Dad always offered a cup. Always accepted one. He’d sit, drink coffee, talk, and listen. In his kitchen. In theirs.

At the office, I always accept the offered coffee poured into my cup over the stain of the day before's coffee. I stand, sip that bitter coffee, talk, and listen.

Dad's unfinished cup has gone cold in the kitchen of memory. Death having called him out one last time.

Ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness, some light.

I carry that coffee up to my office and sit alone sipping again from a cup daily refilled.