What creative projects have you been working on?

Most recently, it was a decorating project. In moving to take care of my grandmother, I basically gave away/sold everything I had accrued. All of my furniture, all of my books, everything I could not fit in a four-door either got given away, sold, or pitched. There's two reasons for that. First was that I wanted to. I grew to greatly dislike a lot of that stuff because of what it represented to me, a ball of crap to keep track of/move around, cobbled together out of gifts and deals and whatnot. Second, my grandmother's house is stuffed with furniture already - there is no space for another bed, another couch, another desk (and my desk was enormous), and none of that stuff works with the aesthetics she has going on. So, since I've gotten here I've been puzzling over how to make a real comfy space, a space I could exist in all the time.

Anyway, this is what I was able to accomplish, rearranging what furniture was there and getting what accessories I wanted/needed. Tried to show both natural light and artificial. I like lights. I don't care if it looks childish or silly, I like my RGB and string lights and all that kind of shit. Tree thing was seven dollars, couldn't resist. The bulbs are set at purple atm but can be any color, string lights are white because that's all I could find. I think it works out ok. I would like to replace the bed cover, but that was the only one which was both, the right size and comfy to me, so I probably won't. Searching around upstairs, I found all sorts of busts and flowers and decorative things, so I tried to achieve an eclectic mix of what little I still have and what was already there. Took a lot of work too; this room was stuffed. Multiple recliner chairs, a loveseat, little tables and the bed, and it was all quite dainty as you can probably imagine. Room was already purple too, because this used to be my grandmother's upstairs bedroom (she's since moved downstairs, and painted that room purple too).

Finding out you can see the moon go across the sky from my desk window was icing on the cake. From about dusk until 10:30, it slowly goes across the sky, until the roof obscures it. My room faces the back of the property, so there's lots of green trees and you can hear the birds in the morning. If you leave the blinds open, the sun will brighten the room gradually, so you can just wake up as the day starts (no alarm clock!). I've never felt as comfortable as I do in this space, it's amazing and getting this done over the weekend felt like a pretty nice accomplishment.

I sat down on Monday and wrote a 10-page screenplay for an short film idea that's been rolling around in my head. I don't remember the last time I actually finished writing something that wasn't for work. Felt great. I printed it out and everything.

I've had filmmaking on my mind a lot lately. Trying to pivot from advertising because film is originally what I went to school for. Its a difficult (and expensive) pivot.

In an effort to shift my brain away from quality gear, and into quantity gear, I’ve spun up my own website and set a goal to publish some creative work every day (self promotion, you can go visit at https://3e8.dev/daily/, self promotion over). I’m only three days in so far but I’m almost proud of what I’ve made so far, and I'm actually a little surprised that my brain has been able to hit deadlines all along (although, as mentioned before: perhaps a little premature.)

And I'm a little hesitant to say things like, “we’ll see how long it lasts” (or indeed talk about confidence at all!) because a significant percent of all problems ever are confidence problems, and confidence problems can always be solved by simply lying. I have tried to get myself into the mindset of “I will be doing this” with this project, and to be honest it's been a lot more effective than I expected. Maybe that’s been helped by publishing only on my own website, which has the (deserved) reputation of a ‘screaming into the void’ deal.

Rambling over. Feedback would be appreciated: do your worst!

I finished another track, and this morning it hit streaming services - here's a link if anyone wants to listen.

The title and artwork are AI generated because I don't really care about it at this stage. I decided the most important thing is to finish music, regardless of quality, and to upload it on streaming services immediately. The worst thing that can happen is that nobody listens to it, but for me it provides a sense of finality so I'll keep doing it from now on.

Last week I tried to play around with hardstyle/hard dance as it's one of my favorite genres, but mixing the kick with the melodic elements feels impossible, so I've been stuck there. I think I'll put that on hold for now, until I gain a better understanding of mixing and EQ. I do want to make a drum and bass track, so I think that's what I'll be doing next (after finishing my university projects).

• Updates to my site.
• (Somewhat related): Rethinking how I approach my presence on the web in different contexts and different privacy levels re: personal site, social media, etc. and trying to strike a balance between them all that means in some contexts I'll be very forward and opinionated and loud and amplify other voices too and in other contexts I'll be vague, a bit more open-minded, and minimally descriptive upfront of my stances- this is all in the service of privacy, opsec, how i appear to those with power over me going forward, tact, "defusing" anger/hatred, introducing nuance, minimizing assumptions, but again, all in different balances depending on the audience or context.
• Looking at different options for project sites I've got in my head
• Practicing more guitar, planning to play around with keyboards and my DAW more, maybe even considering looking at some cheap used equipment to expand what I've got.
• Hoping to have (and I say this all the time and always put it off and never get it accomplished) finished a single song sometime soon, then maybe an EP, then hopefully eventually an album- or multiple singles/EPs under different project names (different genres) depending on how the music moves me

Oh, I've also been wanting to start journaling on my typewriter instead of writing by hand (my hand cramps easily). The problem is, I like using smaller paper/margins, and once I get ripping, it gets really annoying to have to swap out paper constantly. It really interrupts my flow and introduces a lot of friction that I find annoying.

The solution? I bought a 18inch roll of craft paper and used my bandsaw to cut it into thirds. It was non-trivial finding the width I wanted in roll form that WASN'T thermal paper (the stuff used in kitchen printers and stuff, it fades really quick). So I ended up buying a roll of paper directly from some industrial printing supply company. Can't remember which one, but I bought a fuck ton so that I'll never have to buy more again.

The fun result is that as my journal entries stack up, it starts to look like some sort of sacred scroll. I like to think my kids and grandkids of the future will have a lot of fun pouring through my sacred texts (see: ramblings), but they'll have a hell of a time trying to digitize it, that's for sure!

So I basically have a roll of paper mounted on a dowel that hangs from the wall behind the typewriter. As I type, the action of the typewriter automatically pulls on the roll to feed the paper through. The output goes up and wraps around another dowel mounted on the wall. Eventually I'll set up some sort of spring or tension system that automatically wraps the output (right now I have to twist it up every few "pages"). The problem with a spring system is that I don't want it to interfere with the existing outfeed action of the typewriter. For now, I'm fine with wrapping it by hand if the alternative if swapping in a single sheet at a time!