• Tuesday, 03/21/2023 ** 00:24 The limitation isn't tech anymore - it's time. There are no scarce physical cards or credits to put into a device or any natural financial barrier to producing physical flash cards or other storage devices.

I miss rare data, rare games - I want to bring something over to a friend's house and share it with them physically; I want it to run seamlessly on their system, no matter what it is, plugging in my little USB stick and loading in a little program like an old Nintendo game or PSP disc. When only one person can play that game at a time, scarcity forms relationships between people - meeting to pass off the game is an opportunity to talk about it and to spend time together. ** 09:45 Inspiration isn't useful... a consistent practice is. I'm spending too much time looking at images on the internet and not enough time producing things myself. It's impossible to run out of things made by others - there are far more people producing quality content than you will ever have time to consume - but you can decide to turn off input and focus on output. ** 14:23 games I want games that are smaller and slower and less realistic, that are contemplative and ask you to take pause or help you relax, ** 17:13 It's important to remember that your feeling of melancholy is, in part or in full, normal during the work day. Watching Laurel's calm demeanor as she gave a tour of her living spaces, highlighting every part of them that meant something (and everything meant something), was heartwarming, but what I took away most from them was her even-keeled disposition and attitude towards her passion - everything she does she has done for years, and everything has been appreciated, normalized, 'solved' - every item has its own place. This is true comfort - all the exploration of others is done but there is so much left to be discovered.

Videos have desensitized you to novelty. Any job can be bade interesting - you just have to dig and dig and dig, checking more things off the list, until only the novel work is left. There is no cheat code to escaping mediocrity, and you are mediocre on a global scale: you're more known by what you consume, what you curate, what you keep than than than what you create. Good taste is important but too much content makes you derivative - you're left no room to explore if your daydreaming is spent looking at the realized work of others.

Solution?

Delayed gratification.

Don't consume from a firehose expecting to reach the end of the water. The first stuff will be recycled by the time you reach the end of it, and you'll have forgotten that it ever passed you.

I'm skeptical that inspiration every day is needed. Day-to-day work is enough to inspire most of the time, even if it just feels mediocre in the moment. Cool code and cool photos and cool people make me light up without any real content consumption.

Instead, set aside time every week for learning more - diving deep into a subject instead of exploring broadly. Write more than you read, connecting the dots about the subject - it can be a Game Boy or an Institute or a person or a beautiful piece of artwork. What matters is that you are focused entirely on understanding why that object or concept is interesting to you and placing it within your larger context, once a week.

Multimedia content can be made with this conclusion - but it's best to start with writing. Not enough of this knowledge is recorded and brought together in one place. Dedicate a whole day to putting pieces together every week and another few hours before you publish.

What day is best to publish?

Let's dedicate Sundays to exploring, edit on Monday, and attempt to publish on Monday or Tuesday. Use Substack at first, then switch to your own system once the website has been better established. Sunday shouldn't just be reserved for the internet - spend time outside, at a museum or on a walk or around a corner, and try to connect the concept to some larger, real-world context. Go on a walk and observe the impact of the topic on your daily life.

Two concepts are most important here - learning to communicate and communicating to learn. The best way to learn is to appreciate the world around you and figure out where a little piece of it comes from. Nothing is natural - everything about your life was designed and constructed - and the most interesting thing someone can do is to understand when, why and how. ** 18:35 Every day I welcome more tracking into my life. Google knows my minute-to-minute location. This wiki and its notes and chats will forever be recorded public on the internet. I hope a robot will be able to reconstruct me completely. My only issue with this data is that it is not completely public for everyone to view. I want everyone to be able to learn everything about me. They will resurrect me when I'm dead.

Trying to mix up different times and places through photo was a bit of a mistake. All of the photos from Berlin obviously look better together and I'm learning more from editing them as a series than trying to mix them with other experiences of mine around the world. It's okay for your style to change with your physical space. ** 19:04 If something stands out to you right away about a platform's user experience - especially for a business-to-business product - maybe the interactions, a cute animation, or a little quirk in the way the text vibrates - the product is being too cute. The only thing that should attract your attention is the task at hand, and the only goal to accomplish is to finish interacting with the platform as quickly as possible and make actionable change.

This is not to say that platforms should not be fun. If an opportunity for fun aligns with the platform's critical path - rather than conflicting with it - then by all means the user flow should make the process feel fun. Don't go back to square one or inhibit the user in any way - just augment their current work and make it as smooth and as exciting as possible.