Tiny Talk with Lauren Hallden

You have a handful of cool personal projects/opinions that other people got excited about. Which one is your favorite?

I was most proud of the therapy cost calculator. It took in some info about your health insurance and finances, and then predicted how much a year of therapy appointments might cost you on average. The sticker price is often not what you end up paying (even if your therapist is out of network), and a lot of people don’t get that!

It was like a one-page TurboTax in javascript with a very simple, empathetic UX. Unfortunately the tax code and insurance plans change all the time, and I haven’t been able to keep that project updated in recent years. But I very deeply believe in making things yourself when you wish something existed. Even if the things you make can’t be perfect. I need to devote more time to side projects like this again.

One of the things I’ve always admired about you as a designer is your ability to work in whatever medium suits your ideas, whether that’s photography or an iOS app or a card game(!!). I will say, I’ve been finding a real sense of satisfaction in building physical things recently. One of my favorite recent projects was this small-space bookshelf I built for our baby.

What’s the deal with Philly?

Philly’s been home for 23 years for me, and we can poke fun at ourselves, but nobody else better.

The truth is that there are high highs and low lows here. Philly has a high poverty rate for a major city, and the state holds a lot of power over how we’re allowed to tax and fund services here. That’s left us in a public transit funding crisis, which is frustrating because the transit network is one of the best things about living here.

Walkability in Philly is amazing, though. Daycare is a 20-minute walk full of firetruck sightings and dogs to squeal at, passing a park, grocery store and a library on the way. And here in Mt Airy we’re adjacent to one of the largest urban park systems in the country, so we can also hike and mountain bike. I’ve found it easy to meet people and make friends here. For a big city, it feels small in a good way. And the food is amazing!

There are certainly days where I get fed up with Philly — it can be dirty and noisy and rude, too — but there are so many reasons to stay.

You’re wonderfully honest online about, well pretty much whatever it is you’re sharing at the moment. Has this earned you any unexpected love/hate? 

Thank you. Being vulnerable is always hard, and I don’t think it was encouraged much when we were young. But I find the impulse to hide my problems and present myself as though I’m perfect is actually pretty destructive to my overall well-being!

I’ve never received much hate for speaking honestly about something I’m going through, surprisingly. I guess one time I wrote something about dating that went viral enough to get recapped by the Daily Mail, and a commenter said I’d die alone with my cats. Joke’s on him; we have a lizard.

I know that my talking openly about therapy has encouraged a lot of people to try it. Nearly any time I talk about something personal, the most common response I see is “me too.” I still find it easier to share online than face to face, though. In person I fear judgment. But hopefully this is a muscle I’m building that gets stronger over time.

(One day maybe I’ll figure out how my fear of being judged nevertheless led me to choose UX, a career that is the unceasing reception of feedback. Haha.)

What’s the biggest surprise in parenthood that you never saw coming?

I waited a really long time to decide whether to become a mom (I had our baby, Jasper, at 40), and one of my main worries was how to parent as an introvert. I felt like I could handle an infant, but a toddler? Who repeats “mama mama mama” on loop and physically tugs on you, all day? Toddlers were scary.

But here I am with a 15-month old, and I’m happy to report that my fears were overblown. I don’t actually find myself bothered by mama mama mama. OK yes, it’s inconvenient that I sometimes can’t get up and walk to the fridge without him getting upset that I’m “leaving”. But I’m so aware of how little time we have in this phase. And how little time we have together each day. The reality of how your hours are spent when you have a baby and two parents with nine-to-fives is just brutal.

This current moment we have with him, where he’s attempting to learn the word “avocado” and it’s coming out like “ca-ca-do” and it’s fascinating and magical and adorable and he’s SO excited avocados exist — that’s the only moment like this there will ever be. I feel that all the time, now.