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I've become mildly obsessed with figuring out how to use a hand plane and what, if anything, among my wooden dalliances might make use of it. If nothing else, a useful way to think through the roadblocks in the (narrative) WIP(s) for which I’ve a notion of how to move forward that I want to explore this week. Not sure how it'll work out, but it might give me room to breathe on both – and leave open room for seeding two potential other things.

fallen bits of planed wood

reanimation

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This whole slowing down – this whole letting myself slow down – thing is wonderful, yesterday being the first (non-hospitalized – and even that's been almost eight) morning in more than 10 years that I said to hell with it and took the day off. Might become a regular Sunday thing, especially since the NL is now monthly (releasing next Sunday) and I'm hoping NuSanctum yields more work / make during the week.

Perhaps I can owe figuring out how to move forward with the post-ink therapy reanimation of a project I long thought dead (method being the same as my usual method of reanimation: start a new document, put it next to the old one in an infinite project canvas, copy and paste and rewrite in(to) the new from the perspective of now, junk everything else) to this slow down and day off? If so, more please.

Moving things out piecemeal to NuSanctum, though most of today will be spent prepping the cardboard and rubble from yesterday's mini-heatdome desk assembly session for the recycle bin.

tue/20240820

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Chilly morning, pleasantly so; oh, Mother Nature, you incorrigible, pre-apocalyptic tease.

Now that I(think)'ve got more time for The Work throughout the day and the newsletter has shifted to a (far more workable) monthly schedule, a changeup inbound here. 50% of the way there today, full tilt tomorrow: shift this space into being less of a status-update thing and more of a status / thought synthesis thing, with these wordthings being the first things posted (end of the first chunk of the day, more or less), Attendance Cards the second (a way to bring me back into The Work, and a useful visual separation between days), approx midmorning, see you tomorrow – though once I'm working in NuSanctum (dogchild door successfully installed, with much rage and profanity, yesterday), that might shift to mid-morning for these, mid-afternoon for ACs, especially since I'll be able to move to a more sane schedule.

(All, as ever, subject to change.)

Kamala's raucous reception at her brief appearance at the DNC was moving: this is '08 all over again, not only in the candidate and running mate (Walz is nothing if not a more progressive Biden 20 years younger), but – save any shred of dignity and worthiness of respect – in the opponent, the oldest candidate ever to run for the office picking a young rising star (about to flame out) profoundly unfit to serve ice cream let alone step into the presidency (Palin, even, was more prepared than Vance – at least she was a governor, who could, we should remember, see Russia from her front porch).

Present quandary (other than standard perplexity in The Work at hand): why does the left option key on my Kinesis keyboard stop working at random times? Some key combo I press in my slop-type or a sign of diminished implemental capability?

project updates, 2024w31

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Since it's the final weeks of summer break, I'm still in that "three months of Saturdays" mode, creatively, and haven't gotten as far as I'd've liked with anything, really, but did manage to send off the first story in a collab with my best hermano from music school which he dug. Looking forward to hearing what genius sounds he concocts from my drabbled-out words.

While I'd intended to return to multiple projects left behind, only one of them still sung to me (mostly because I found my way back to it being fun to work with it again), so I want to power through it while I let seeds take root for the next stories in the collab. If nothing else, a solid excuse to fiddle about (again, still) with zines and attendant zinery.

Still hoping to move on to what I perceive as the next phase of my creative practice before year's end – though I do want to get the project mentioned above into the world first, a clearing of the decks from the before to the now.

And, finally, after four years of mucking about with fountain pens, I've returned to my favorite pen, that great workhorse among great workhorses, the Papermate Flair.

M3 morning one

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First morning with the M3 Air being one of experimentation, of figuring our way around each other, of making do with improvised risers (have an actual laptop stand coming later today), and adapting previous processes to this new tool: it's been a most welcome change. 15" M3 screen so good I don't miss the 20"-loss from the 34" I was using with the Mini – though Obsidian canvi are a tad unwieldy on the smaller screen (but the focus of going back to single documents has been grand). Only thing I do miss, rather terribly, is the Elgato Stream Deck, but I'll eventually get that hooked back up. Maybe that could be today's job; remembering all those custom Obsidian hot keys has been… challenging. Kinesis Freestyle 2 Blue keyboard and Logitech Ergo M575 trackball integrated flawlessly (though it'll be nice to spread the Kinesis out a bit more with the dedicated laptop stand).

mactest

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Bit of a test post, first post written on the M3 Macbook Air, 15" and jesusfuck this screen is beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, it's more than enough space than I need to work with (think my biggest laptop screen was 12", maybe), and I've taken out the external monitor and am giving going solely with the Air a go. Pre-NuShed trials. Decided that it'll be my studio / makerspace: I haven't gotten to to go anywhere for work in 15 years so I might as well shuffle across the backyard and give it a go. Oh, I do like this thing – though I’ve got to set up my invaluable Elgato Stream Deck again. Small price.