Thinking about: how to make this space feel more organic to the current state of my creative practice (beyond The Informalities, of course) but in what can only be described as a non-performative extension of my toiling/tinkering in The Shed.
First order of business: what makes The Shed The Shed and what makes PR PR and where do they intersect?
P.S. Thrilled beyond words that my life has pretty much become a Tom Waits song: "What's he building in there?"
Over the last several months, I've been trying to figure out what form, exactly, best represents the me of now in the digital space (medium being the message, perhaps). Back and forth between this blog being my primary representation and a more informal (heh) and far-less-onerous-than-Squarespace approach via my self-hosted Mastodon instance. Like the proverbial Goldilocks, none of them fit and, though I've yet to be eaten, I knew I needed a new approach.
Thanks to Claude AI, two RSS feeds, and many iterations of back and forth coding, I've got both; enter: Scraps, the best of both worlds, that works for the me of now: when I want to write something longer or post the daily Informality, it goes through the blog. When I want to dash off something of a more ephemeral, fleeting nature, Mastodon. Both, then, are combined in the widget that takes up this Scraps page; the widget is designed to only share posts from the blog that have titles – this post is, itself, a test post to see how full-text posting looks in the widget. If someone wants to only follow longer-form piecs, the blog rss still works great; if you want to go through Mastodon, follow me there or via that page's RSS feed.
Still ironing out the kinks, but I'm rather pleased with this.
Just a test post to see if I’d really like to restart the blog or if I’m just aching for something different. Dig the Mastodon feed page, but I do miss the mid-10’s Tumblr-ness of the blog iteration. IDK - getting a full-sized iPad again helped; creating on a Mini is fucking useless. Oh, and there’s new metalwork going on - even if my 3D printing has stalled due to needing to readjust settings because it got Ohio hot all of the sudden. This was kind of nice to write.
Windy, cold: hello, Winter. Efforts underway in earnest to either recapture my passion for writing or to let it go with happiness as The Swell Season said and move on. Swapping out the order of bloggy release – Herbie and I will appear in cartoon Informality form midday, at least until I change my mind and revert to the same old same old – is part of it, the opening salvo, mostly to churn something again, to feel my brain wrap around a subject or twenty, to reconcile itself in text – present goal being to make this space one of synthesis, first in text, then in cartoon form; the opposite wasn't working, nor was synthesizing solely in cartoon form. Perhaps this will be the right path for this moment until this moment passes which may be in a year or by midday when I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake and cartoon Herbie and I take it out on myself.
I want to write more words here but every time I begin the process of writing more words, I lose all interest in the thought by the end of the first sentence. This being the exception. Perhaps a time limit needs to return – 15 minutes for the comix blogging of The Informalities, 15 minutes for these wordy bloggings? A right brain exercise in graphic and text.
Worth noting that this isn't really a "have to" or "should" or "must" - there's definitely a "want to / wanna" – but can't shake feeling that perhaps that wanna is only a want to ameliorate the have to shoulds or musts.
Frequency and rules stay the same (daily, 4’33” - though that timing may increase, TBD – sketch featuring myself and nuHerbie in some form of single-panel adventure) but it’s time to move away from stealing Lynda Barry’s name and re-embrace The Informalities, my favorite series title of anything I’ve created. And so it is / shall be / etc etc.
For the past two days, an incessant bang/clang. Pretty sure it's construction on the bridge a little ways down the highway, but can't be sure.
Speaking of construction: Shortened day as I'm also neck-deep in transforming The Paintshop into the pool table room / workout room / Collection haven and have bookshelves to build. Going with two wall-mounted shelves per unit, around the top of the room. Need to save up every bit of space I can find to ensure proper cue-table distance for shooting pool. Once the shelves are up, might have a better idea of what else I need to do with the space.
As for here, I'm in the process of figuring out the best way to have this digital space represent me where I am now, creatively and authentically, without losing that something something about it that makes me want to consistently evolve it so that it remains an omnipresent part of my life.
Need to go buy lumber. And mozzarella for salad. And a new coffee grinder. Fucking burr grinder died on me at 0500 this morning.
First day of school (childless; small humans arrive next Wednesday) for K. Meetings and meetings and meetings and more meetings.
Keep wanting to do more text things here, but nothing coming to me, except this. With the impending workspace move to NuSanctum, my mornings will look a bit different – slower, for one – so maybe I can figure out a way to incorporate something not dissimilar to this in that space. Of course, the other end of that spectrum is as if not more appealing: a switch entirely over to a single page with the day's Attendance Card and have that be it and all, my 4’33” version of a FAR SIDE desk calendar.
On that: I might've reached a point with the internet where I have the least interest in being online since party line days and three channels. Not sure why, other than it bores me – just another pointless routine. Need to make it a wild and different place, eliminate habits of old, find a new way (pretty much the same thing I've been doing for the last year).
Maybe a single Attendance Card is the way to go? Or maybe with this out of my system, I can clear the decks for something different?
A desire to shake things up here though I don't know which things will be shaken. Considered multiple avenues, including simply a homepage featuring a single Attendance Card and occasional edits to the Currently page – though suppose I always could go with the Currently page as the homepage, since it would combine both...
Unsure if this desire is indicative of a switch to more inner processing or a genuine boredom with being online (as I've become generally bored with the internet which is both a reflection of me and of the internet's current state) or something else; I have, I suppose, been doing this blogging thing for a minute or two – but it is, nonethless, a form I've loved and continue to love: along with email newsletters, it's the warhorse of the internet age.
Note: most likely change / shake shake will be no shake / change at all – but I can’t deny that the desire is there.
Apologies for the morning’s disappearing and reappearing posts: I fucked up the dates and my OCD wouldn’t allow me to leave them alone. All good. It’s 04 April. Did you know that? I clearly didn’t.