i’ve published two new substack essays in the past 3 days or so, with a total of almost 7000 words. i wrote both of them off the cuff, in single sessions. that feels really good. i think i’m starting to get a sense for a particular style and approach that i want to lean into at least for a moderate period of time, tentatively i think for the rest of the year. its maybe a little premature to say this but if i can write and publish one essay every two days i think it would heal something in me. i’ve been emotionally, psychologically, intellectually constipated for some time now and I just need to get that shit out, pardon my language
i think i need to learn to see my notes as sketches rather than as plans that i have to follow. i am allowed to discard my plans to focus on whatever feels most compelling at any given moment.
my body is really sore at the moment. i’m thinking about the concept of deloading in workouts, and wondering if my failure to do so in the past is part of what kept me trapped at local maximas. only way to know for sure is to try it and see if i can keep going
noticed that multiple people have quoted/cited me re: do100things on their own blogs and projects. feels great
currently feeling an urge to write an overview of my blog
learned that the Sonoma OS allows for linking notes within/to other notes, that might open up some interesting possibilities, maybe. allows for indexing
i think one of the things i’ve learned from the past couple of substack essays i’ve written is that there’s still so much opportunity for me to do some good, consequential introspection. like, i may have semi-accidentally-on-purpose cultivated a persona of myself who knows what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, etc… and i think those things are true… but there’s also so much that’s unclear. i do feel like things are clearing, becoming more clear. i’m feeling the building of a sense of momentum. i’m ready to start moving more things to my archives, clearing my workspace/deskspace, and focus on writing as a kind of performance art
i do know that i don’t want to keep writing about writing. i want to explore real puzzles, real problems, i want to understand media, understand psychology, understand people, help people. i do want to sell more books and do more consults and make more money and leave yishun, bringing my family to a new chapter in our lives
i want to feel less slovenly, more purposeful. but i know that i can’t rush it. i need to ask questions and answer them. i need to tie up loose ends but i don’t accomplish that by focusing on the loose ends, i accomplish that by focusing on the win loops. so what’s the next win loop? right now i need to finish this and go to sleep. what will i do when i wake up? whatever chores need to be done… i have multiple books that i have been meaning to write up notes for. what’s stopping me from doing that? some kind of perfectionism
when will i write a post about wooten and werner and so on? when will I turn “tweet like a maniac” thread into a substack post? i do believe these things will happen and i also think i shouldn’t particularly try to exert myself to do them. rather i want to fall comfortably into some wuwei type shit, really just flow with it and see where it takes me. i can trust myself. i trust that i have done a lot of preparation and reading and so on. in fact i do think i’d like to do more reading. i’ve been banging my head at the door a little too much. which is fine, it’s all part of the process
i want to be a columnist. i have a large audience for my twitter which is cool, and thousands of people have read my books, and now it’s time for me to cultivate an audience for my longform 3000 word essays. and my essays are significantly going to be performance art pieces of me figuring things out in real time. i think that’s much more valuable than me listing out a bunch of answers. what i really want to do is demonstrate what it is to ask questions. that’s how i’ll teach dynamism. that’s how i’ll teach perception and thinking and feeling and understanding. i can trust that i have meaningful and interesting things to say. i can navigate moment by moment and do major corrections periodically rather than agonize about them. might write something about “apple computer → apple”
i want to get in tune with my wants. what do i want? i want to have fun. i want to explore. i want to learn. the most recent thing i learned is that architecture requires courage. what else do i want to learn? i want to learn consequential things, things that have a material impact on my everyday life. changing my language did that. i want to write about reconceptualizing. we can freestyle from that as a start. i might do a nerdposting essay about rat fink to demonstrate what nerdposting can be like. that’s more performance art for ya.
what else is there to say i had a bad dream a few days ago and i’m still a little mad about it, lol. but dreams be dreams. i still want to do history stuff. but i should ask specific particular questions rather than try to do these broad stroke things. what were the major media events in my life? titanic, matrix… phantom menace was set up to be one but it didn’t seem to go well. 9/11 obviously. covid. i keep wanting to write grand things about singapore but again i should pick something small and specific. could talk about dad’s business again. get more specific. describe very specific things. describe very specific things.