You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Writing on the WWW
Own your website. It’s important because you control the format now and forever if you want to. No social media because that isn’t yours. Your social media account is just renting space until you are evicted.
Buy a domain name, choose a blog host, install WordPress blogging software on it. Once you are about 50% content with the way your own site looks, move on to long form and short form writing, photos, drawings, whatever you fancy… because it is yours. Leave the final 50% for slow, and incremental enhancements along the way. If you’re wondering what style or format you should write, write as though if you were writing a friend in an email.
Categorize and tag your posts for future reference and easy search on a topic you wrote 5 years ago. You’ll thank yourself later.
While going through the downloaded archives of my old Twitter account, I realized several things which are going to shape the way I write on the web in the future.
The mundane rituals of the past will now seem fascinating in 10 years time, because you see that things have changed and have also stayed the same. Such as living in a different state(s), or you’re now with someone else. Taking a moment to capture your life as it is now helps nostalgia down the road.
2006–10–25 19:37:06 +0000 My obligatory first tweet here on TWTTR.
2007–12–07 03:42:50 +0000 still can’t get Photoshop working and now I can’t open the RAW images I took from my new Nikon D200 camera. @#$%@*&
2012–01–17 21:30:40 +0000 Relocating to Tulsa in T-minus 12 hours.
2012–12–07 13:50:58 +0000 Holy shit I turned 40 today.
Twitter: @mojodenbow
Those tweets are well and good for documenting the times but how much more valuable are they on your own website? Social media isn’t forever, they come, go and most will take all the effort you put into it with them. I can look back fondly on my brief flirtation with both Linux and Windows operating systems, or a photo of my daughter from 2009 easily.
JANUARY 1, 2013 / CHRIS / INFODENBOW
HAPPY GNU YEAR
I’ve taken on another project that involves diving deep inside the Linux operating itself. For a few years I’ve been using a dual boot hybrid desktop using Ubuntu and Windows 7. I’ve added the Fedora distribution inside a virtual machine inside Ubuntu and deleted the Windows partition. Oh, and GNU = “Gnu’s Not Unix”
So I continue generating text, photos, doodles and anything else I want. For me. This website is a kinetic journal and I plan to continue doing this right to the end. I suggest everyone create their own website here on the WWW.
Microblogging
I’ve embraced the idea… that a short update or single photo post counts. In the past I would send a tweet or an image to somewhere else on someone else’s social site. No more. Not when a quick post here will suffice. Because these tweets and images are equal to a blog post here. Everything I post to my personal websites have the same weight.
Connectile Dysfunction
I’ve made posting to this site as easy as I’m capable of but still restricted due to no SSL certificate assigned to this micro site sub domain. This blocks my writing software from posting automagically to this site. So manual it is. Too much friction.
Productivity?
I should really get my shit together.
I’m thinking of changing/eliminating my complex “productivity” system with something simpler.
Such as “Write it down so I don’t forget it. Then do it as soon as I can.”
I don’t need more software. I need more ideas and the energy to act on them.
Urgent
Establishing a creative practice is our most valuable and urgent task – as important to our well-being as fitness or nutrition.
Chase Jarvis
Negative Type
Having an issue changing ribbon on the typewriter today. Frustrating and how the heck did the writers of the past use this so frequently?
Possibilities
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Use Them
In the digital age, don’t forget to use your digits! Your hands are the original digital devices. Use them.
Lynda Berry
What To Do With A Manual Typewriter
Step one really should be to change out the ribbon. I’ll be back when step one is completed.
Exploring Creativity
What does it mean to be an explorer of art? To reach out and investigate out of curiosity. Right now I am curious about analog art, that which is done by hand and not digitally like I have been doing for the past twenty years.
As a child, I was naturally curious in just about everything. That curiosity has been set aside through education and a career. Always on a back burner simmering until recently it has been boiling over and ready to go.
So why explore now? To inspire myself, to see new things or to see things in a different perspective and to create something different.
Recent examples have included making zines of my photos using Affinity Publisher or Apple Pages. Or by pushing buttons in GarageBand to generate “music” on a loop for a photo collage soundtrack.These are creative ways to explore the art of making photo books or collages. But there is still so much left to be explored and conquered such as sketching, painting, paper collage and somehow creating a hybrid of these with my photos. That reminds me to send some images to a photo lab and make paper prints for use later.
YOU ARE AN EXPLORER.
YOUR MISSION IS TO DOCUMENT AND OBSERVE THE WORLD AROUND YOU AS
IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.
TAKE NOTES.
CoLLECT THINGS YoU FIND ON YOUR TRAVELS.
DOCUMENT YoUR FINDINGS. NOTICE PATTERNS.
COPY. TRACE.
FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME.
RECORD WHAT YOU ARE DRAWN To.HOw To BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD
I. ALWAYS BE LOOKING. NOTICE THE GROUND BENEATH YOUR FEET.
2. CONSIDER EVERYTHING ALIVE & ANIMATED
3. EVERY THING•iS INTERESTING. LOOK CLOSER
4. ALTER YOUR COURSE OFTEN.
5. OBSERVE FOR LONG DURATIONS (AND SHORT ONES )
6. NoTICE THE STORIES GOING ON AROUND YOU.
7. NOTICE PATTERNS, MAKE CONNECTIONS.
8. DOCUMENT YOUR FINDINGS (FIELD NOTES) IN A VARIETY OF WAYS.
9. OBSERVE MOVEMENT.
10. CREATE A PERSONAL DIALOGUE WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT. TALK TO IT.
11. TRACE THINGS BACK TO THEIR ORIGINS
12. USE ALL OF THE SENSES. IN YoUR INVESTIGATIONS.Keri Smith, How To Be An Explorer of the World
Explorers, scientists and artists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. I don’t know what will come from all of this new art kick but I will enjoy exploring and discovering the world in ways I haven’t done or even imagined until recently.
Time to log off this laptop and apply pencil to paper.
Project Daphne
Finally getting around to creating that photo journal of my daughter. It has only taken fourteen years.
Side note: It is easier than I thought now that Apple Pages allows us to make photo books. I think I’ll send to the printer as well as a digital .pdf.
