/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.

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.

refuel / bridge

Riding and occasionally drowning in the wave of The Void, the BIG Void, first zilch period, no long-term projects, in almost 25 years. Simultaneously liberating and terrifying, finding my way back to having a creative brain again or, rather, a creative brain able to concoct something interesting be it word, picture, word and picture, scrap metal, and/or any combination thereof. Perhaps more regular textual postings will appear here (as I've wanted before) but I do know that I've brought out my paints and canvi and am painting again. Seems to be a bridge / gap pursuit / release that yields things in those other media that I have slightly more than a fetus's ability at and even then – and an invaluable tool for returning to "play and explore," something I'm going to fight like hell to maintain going forward, no matter the medium. Think it was something I read / heard David Bowie say, that when he's stuck or empty, he turns to painting to reignite. If I'm going to take anyone's advice...

/20250602_1027

A writing morning, hoping to make this the regular thing (though in summer months, I may have to switch: metalwork in the cooler mornings, writing in the AC'ed shed in the hot afternoons).

Aiming to wrap up one large project over the next couple days – or to at least have an incling as to an idea of HOW to wrap up one large project. Hopeful that finishing this one – started in the pre-metalwork days – can act as a bridge to whatever the next phase of my writing (process) looks like, one more influenced by metalwork than the other way 'round. Scribbling nonsense (and writing posts) to unstick / speaking of: Rite in the Rain pencil ➑️ paper love continues, especially since I've added a rOtring rapid PRO 0.7mm pencil to my graphite scribble practice.

Brought my BOOM3 speaker out to The Shed so maybe I can start my way through that Bandcamp / EarBliss backlog because why would I listen to music any other time right?

new approach

A shift in my writing practice, from the daily guilt-ridden grind of days, weeks, years past to a more "blast all of it in a few weeks or days when the need strikes" now. Perhaps what I was needing was something like metalwork (and my resultant newfound obsession with 3D printing not only to reproduce metalwork in plastic but to design pots for K since I found scanning and printing different versions of existing ones to be onerous, to put it mildly) to fulfill me in the non-writing parts of my day. Which are a lot of them. Far happier and more fulfilled, creatively, away from the computer, playing with fire and sparks and making weird metal things, than I am staring at a screen and hating myself for not being able to write something no one will read anyhow.

But yes, a new approach. Toying with the notion of blasting out a novella or something in a short time frame, two weeks to a month, when the need to write strikes me; otherwise, I'll tinker with metal stuff and mini-comics and Singularities and etc. A note to myself in my Obsidian canvas: long-form β‰  long-term.

Now I have figure out how to assemble this 3D printer cover because a shed is not the most dust-free place for a 3D printer to while away its non-whirring hours.

Finding my bliss inside The Shed by moving back and forth between seeding a comics story on one end and tearing apart a reel mower on the other – I have designs for / on that reel – which has, from all the bits and bobs I've found as I dig towards the reel, spawned potentially two-three other metalwork pieces. While words remain elusive, the desire / need to transform the woodscrap leanto out back into my outdoor metalshop is anything but.

How would I write if I were starting now?

This being the question I've been asking myself since I threw out nearly all of my previous notions, WIPs, and ideas from the last 20 years (save the two I'm doing for others) around Christmas. Happy / merry, all that.

How would I write if I were starting now?

Start by cutting myself some slack, giving less of a fuck, certainly; getting there but hey, perfectionism and abandonment issues are a tangled match made in hell. At this rate, should be good by my early 60s. Goals.

Real goal, ideal: write as though I'm always starting now.

(WHAT would I write if I were starting now? This / that / the other. Probably.)