Heavy Weather

5 minutes
thejaymo.net Blog header post 158

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported the blog and my work this week.

I have already covered web & podcast hosting fees for the next year in less than 7 days. I am currently looking at upgrade pathways for both. Watch this space.


The weather finally broke this week after record temperatures and a 500 Hectare fire about 10k to the West of us. Just down the road from a friends place.

I recorded the first drops of rain in weeks as it began to fall. You can hear the constant rumbling of thunder quite clearly. Wonderful.

I’m reminded of Joanne McNeil‘s 2014 call for an Instagram for field recordings

Not only did the weather break. So did a mental blocker I’ve been wrestling with on the mat for some time.

I estimate that I have well over a million words in my Google Docs. Most of it across my Diary, Nanowrimo and the three books worth of material I’ve written in the last two years in between freelance work. A lot of those words are half backed thoughts, extended notes trying to wrap my head around the edges of the reality tunnel that I inhabit.

A few things have come together recently:

1. As I said last week I’ve made ‘self doubt an acquaintance‘,
2. I’ve been re-reading Tom Critchlows work

Tom Critchlow – Thinking In Public

3. Vaughn Tan’s excellent Newsletter this week on surrendering control.

I resist putting writing out in public when the ideas aren’t completely developed. This is pathological in two ways. First, no idea is ever completely developed. Second, putting half-baked ideas out into the world improves them by exposing them to questions and criticisms from people who did not come up with the idea and are not blind to its flaws.

4. Conversations with friends.

I’ve decided to ‘Think in Public’ rather than in Google Docs. Given that I now have a digital begging bowl out there it means that I can justify(?) in my own mind blogging about shit that interests me. Outside of the constraints of these weeknotes I imposed on my self back in 2018 after the worst year of my life in 2017. Returning to the blog was because of how I felt (and still feel) about the future of the web. Also to impose some discipline in my creative life. Starting Permanently Moved weekly furthered that too.

After all, other people hire me to consult on stuff and value my opinion enough to pay me. So why not just blog about shit I want to talk about I the hopes that others will support me to write about more weird shit? Posts I’ve written this year like Craving Canon, the BTS post and how I set up my Bullet Journal have been surprising popular.


WordPress 5.5 arrived this week, along with the newest version of Gutenberg Editor. An interface I’ve previously called Garbage. Well no longer! I really like it. Blocks and Patterns are definitely the future of WordPress. When I eventually get exasperated of the tangled mess that is this websites back end I might shift over to a Theme built in block editor.

With the new block interface being so good I’ve made what is perhaps the biggest change to how I work/write in the last 2.5 years. And given how much Notion.so has change my life thats a bold claim. This might sound silly….

But I’ve started drafting and writing things directly in to WordPress instead of in Google Docs! It’s a revelation!

I found that I instantly whatever half backed thing I was writing felt like it was worth sharing. Even the act of previewing the post makes it feel 80% ready to be published rather than scratched out / abandoned or left to languish in my Gdrive. 80% is good enough for me. Being such a heavy Notion.so user the new UX paradigm and grammars means WP5.5 is a quantum leap in terms of my productivity.

Pulling the trigger and asking people to support the blog and podcast so I can spend more time working on things I enjoy has been the best decision. I’m bubbling with ideas and excited energy for the future.

Permanently Moved

Update From The Island

Island favourite muscle bro Louie had a fight with Maple. After I delivered an apology gift on his behalf – this comment made me laugh out loud.

Also I’d like to have a beer with whoever wrote this line of dialogue. They seem like my kind of person.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

See above.

Dipping the Stacks

Transforming Zombies, Run! for the Lockdown – YouTube

The ‘Templemore Miracles’: How a fake bleeding statue led to an IRA truce (Via Huw Lemmey in a DM)

Tactile Power – Reciprocal Contradiction

Accelerate the Metaverse: Epic Games and the Networked Individual Mindset – xenogothic

Reading

Still listening to Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It and currently reading An Actor Prepares it’s blowing my mind with every turn of the page.

Music

I watched the Zamrock Documentary thats doing the rounds at the moment and have been glued to the 1975 album Africa by Amanaz. This is my favourite song, sounds like Velvet Underground.

Here’s said documentary (Via Open Culture)

Remember Kids:


thejaymo cyberpunk

Oh, boy do I have a lot of ideas.
You can support this blog and my podcast @ thejaymo.net/support. It will enable me to do more ambitious things online and less freelance work offline.


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