fuck it

After 30+ years in some form of creative practice, the only lesson I’ve learned worth passing on is that the magic words are “fuck it” – as in “fuck it, I’m going to The Shed and freeze and fiddle with things,” or “fuck it, I have no clue what I’m doing so (so - not but!) I’m going to do it anyhow because that’s the only way to learn”: this magical refrain being what drew me out of the past few days’ creative stupor (nice to see that posting here again with regularity and verbosity wasn’t solely because of the stupor) to the point that maybe, just maybe I have the start of something worth pursuing that makes use of all those flat metal rods that I cut for another project before deciding to go in a different direction (fuck it), flat metal rods which have, for the last week, been sitting on the workbench with the nine-inch-ish flat metal rod equivalent of a middle finger pointing in my general direction and sneering.

arctic processing

Arctic blast continues its arctic blasting amidst mountains of shoveled snow and my patience for being creatively empty (brought mostly by it being too fucking cold in The Shed to think how I like to think – staring at random scraps of metal (or paper, or words) without a single notion of what I’m going to make until a semblance of potential comes to mind – for more than two minutes at a time) is at a low ebb. While it’s nice that I can occupy myself with writing things for this space and making my way through Stone and Chester drum exercises, I’d much rather be out there making shit without plans and batches and/oh hell I’m just being a bitchy old grump this morning.

While Ann Lamott would tell us that being creatively empty is a chance to fill up again, how, exactly, to refill that empty has been and continues to be the question: the ways that used to work no longer work. Perhaps these postings are part of that refilling?

/202509151210

The laser welder is hooked up and emitting lasers and melting things and welding things (except copper because fuck copper). And burning a hole into the side of The Shed. Oops. All good, clear, etc. Turns out my old argon tank was borked, so I got one of those big ones that a little shorter than me and all was well. Repaired an earlier lamp project, so it's back to a full strength weld. Also learned that the cleaner function on this thing is insane – though I'll still use the flapper disc and angle grinder for larger cleans and the laser for details and those hard-to-reach spaces, as the soap commercials would say. Might do a little metal piece this afternoon to get acquainted with the thing, then see how I'll use it in conjunction with my baby MIG welder. Probably the MIG for initial assembly, and laser for adding details and cleaning up. TBD.

/202509131102

Wee baby welding cart has been modified (see Principle _02) to fit the decidedly not baby laser welder, primarily heavier-duty wheels that aren't held on with pins. Still waiting on the new argon regulator so I can either get an argon flow going from my wee argon canister or upgrade from the wee to a non-wee. While I wait: determine if I can move the welding table to The Shed porch and use metalshack as metal storage (though I’ve given the cart heavy duty wheels, moving a 40-lb laser welder down my little alley path between fence and shed isn’t going to happen). There will be lasers, eventually.

/202509091200

Today being one of those post-project massive Shed clean-up days which have become essential rituals - but this one especially so: I'm finally getting the laser welder set up. Or at least figuring out what I need to get to set it up (I think just a thing of 1mm steel wire but 🤷🤷🤷. Also have to set up a thing to mount my little argon tank to the wall which may need to be changed depending on how much argon this Goldfinger device actually uses. Computer monitor sits, wanting me to work at it but these days my happiest creative moments are spent away from screens with a (shielded) faceful of sparks or scribbling with a pencil in a notebook. Rolling with it.

ch-ch-changes

First, I've brought back my Scraps page, which is fed the ten most recent ephemeral thought morsels via by my self-hosted Mastodon instance (as opposed to pubbing them in this space then copy/pasting them around what remains / passes for the social web); those useless in-between thoughtlets/morsels will live on Mastodon until they die a death-by-vanishing after 30 days because I don't want it to get more expensive to host my own instance and I already felt bad enough that I wasn't using it to its fullest extent.

As for this space, it will remain largely unchanged (save the aforementioned ephemeralities). Basically anything that would either fit in Projects (Informalities, metalwork, paintings, comics, stories, and/or other major releases) or longer-form text. Still considering a daily text post here, but that will have to wait until next month probably, at the earliest.

Central question that's been guiding this reorientation is: How can I make this space be the digital representation of my work in The Shed –projects, pieces, developed thoughts, etc? Think I've found something that will work for now. Giving it a go to see what happens. All I can do.

currently_2025jul28

End of summer break inbound; whereas everyday felt, for the last eight weeks, like Saturday, now they feel like Sunday. And so it goes, through the next few weeks. Things in process:

• Final Shed transition from writing space with tools to full-on industrial art workshop. Metal and pictures and words oh my.

• Moving rocks around nuPond. New footpath in the works for optimal gill-baby viewing.

• Drawing little things for a zine, maybe. Words eventually, again.

• Reading: WE ARE WATCHING, by Alison Gaylin; LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY, by Diarmaid MacCullough

• Watching: PARADISE, season one.

• LISTENING: On a BRMC binge.

• PLAYING: ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY replay on PS5 because my brain can handle only wanton awesomeness and occasional quirk; BALATRO and MARIO KART WORLD on the Switch 2.

• Toying around with new metal ideas, though I might wait for the blazing heat to fuck off to work on something bigger.

a big fucking corkboard

For the first time in more than 10 years I've a raging desire to buy a big fucking corkboard and fill it with index cards with scenes and scraps and phrases and stuff on them (in no particular order), a desire to bring the tactile prototyping approach to thinking that metal (or cardboard and tape) brings to the present (and far-preferred) iteration of my creative practice. Not sure what these hypothetical cards are meant to become – I remain proudly medium agnostic until the time comes to declare my project-faith – though I do know it will be something a.) I can do on my own (or learn to do on my own) and/or b.) nifty, the latter of which is really all that interests me these days. Or, perhaps, it's all just a desire to redecorate The Shed and make one of the walls more useful than as a shelf for things that could and probably should be shelved elsewhere because they're going to fall on me any day now.