In ways both small and profound, the past few weeks have been awash in extraordinary moments of connectedness with the people around me and with the world at large.

• Two products I helped design are now for sale on Amazon.com.
• An icon I thought up and sketched on a Post-it with a Sharpie is now part of the Noun Project.
• Data from a meditation session with an IDEO friend was shared at a conference at MIT for the Dalai Lama.
• I spoke remotely on “Empathy and Innovation” to a group at Harvard Business Publishing, inspiring conversation on really knowing the people you’re designing for.
• In one night I watched a giant meteor flash across the Mission, saw a 3D sonogram of a dear friend’s soon-to-arrive baby, and reconnected with a relative I haven’t seen in 22 years.
• I read a frend’s book in 24 hours, found a charming reference to my ongoing side project that he’d included, and watched said book climb the NYT best seller list.
• I heard the news of a former colleague from Harvard Business School winning the Nobel Prize in Economics.
• I cheered from the sidelines as one friend’s startup was acquired, and another’s major product was released.

This, plus my “normal” work of leading clients and colleagues in field work in three locations, helping to design the future of a product that we all know but probably haven’t seen for a while, co-leading IDEO’s work in hybrid qualitative/quantitative insights, writing another talk for next week, prepping for an interview for an upcoming book on creativity, and more sketching, researching, synthesizing, writing, guiding, and plotting.

Phew!