What creative projects have you been working on?

This year I've revived my YouTube channel from a few years ago centred on the constructed language Toki Pona, that minimalist language with only 130 words. Basically, every Friday I upload a translation of three news stories, narrated by me. It's intended as listening comprehension practice.

But now I've found that the online community has written a few hundred books in toki pona, between translations of existing literature and original works, so soon I'll be pivoting to narrating an excerpt of a book every week instead.

Besides the weekly video, I sometimes upload more free form ones. This week I released a description of my 'toki pona library' project archiving every book I can find in a database (I'm sure some linguist will thank me for it one day), and next week it'll be a video exploring if ChatGPT can speak Toki Pona (the answer is not really, but it does its best to bluff).

It's currently standing at 925 subscribers, so maybe I can finally reach 1,000 in the next few months.

EDIT: Forgot to drop a link!

I have been ruminating on creating a Substack focused on music and have finally decided to embark on making it happen. I really just want to share ways to find music, listen to music and critique it, and other thoughts. It also seems that there isn't a ton of music writing on Substack. This kind of surprises me, but it may just be a limited discoverability when looking without an account.

I have a handful of friends in journalism who have really encouraged me to consider pitching ideas or engage with publications for new music critiques. Modern journalism is increasingly turning to freelance writers --- especially those who have a following already. I have dreams of opening a listening bar, see Eavesdrop NYC deeper interview. I have been blessed to do this in my home with friends, but would love to bring it to a larger audience and think some journalistic credence would make that easier.

For the Substack, I've mostly settled on four content streams:

• record review
• rebuttals of other critiques
• cool records my friends show me
• other music-based topics of conversation

I think this will be a fun experience and good space to write longer form reviews without the character limit that Instagram (where I mostly post) imposes.

I've been tempted for a while to make a text-based survival game (with UI, just no graphics) that's basically State of Decay II, but instead of vistas and voice lines, you have a much larger playing area and a more intricate management system, more akin to that of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. (The latter's detractors claim it to be a spreadsheet simulator, which should give you the insight into how deep that game goes.)

Lately, I've also been dreaming about it being set in a metropolis, in the style of New York City. (Those who know me, know that the choice of the city is not at all surprising.) Here, if I were to take up the task of modelling such an environment, I'd have two choices:

• make up a new city of a similar size: very exciting because I'm an urbanism nerd, but also will take months to do right, or
• model New York City as is: should take a lot less time and be quite exciting in itself, but also not particularly novel, which my ADHD might protest

I have large amounts of time I'm unable to meaningfully use (see: ADHD). If I dedicate myself to a project (plus my job), this leaves no room for other projects. I already have a magazine to work on, and I'm the sole writer/editor/illustrator/developer/designer, which is fun but also takes quite a bit of time to do right.

But it is a tempting idea.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it.

I’ve been working on a surf rock, laid back kind of album for a few months now. Probably gonna get it done before summer. Other than that I’ve been writing a lot of free verse poetry to get the creative juices flowing. And then finally, just continue to oil paint. I’ve been focusing on cartoonish abstracted figuration for a little over a year now but I might get back into some more naturalistic gauche paintings just to break things up a bit.

Mine's a bit weird. During January, we had massive coastal storms in my area. Image like 30 foot surf in areas that usually cap out around 5 feet. Just after the storms I went walking with a friend on the beach and came across about 200 dead gumboot chitons (aka, the wandering meatloaf) washed up on shore. They have some of the coolest skeletons I've ever seen, even one plate is pretty awesome. Anyway they have 8 of these plates that make up there skeletal structure and I have wanted to articulate a chiton skeleton for some time. Well I found the biggest chiton carcass I've ever seen and happily carried it home in a doggy poop bag. I put it underneath the sofa on our side porch while I tried to figure out the best, least disgusting way of getting all the soft bits off of it. Some friends suggested lye, but I was worried it would melt the bones. Others suggested boiling, but that would definitely stink up the house, so another no. Finally someone suggested burying and letting the bugs/fungus/bacteria take care of it. Ah ha! That would be my method. So I went to retrieve my goliath chiton and low and behold, a freaking raccoon had taken it! The little prints we still all over the porch. After that I started combing the beach every few days for a new one. It took about 4 weeks but I stumbled across a small one last week. I immediately buried it in the yard with a small bamboo shaft as an indicator of where to find it. Now I wait.