Weeknotes #14 (Week 34, 2024)
Last updated 11 months, 4 weeks ago
- been thinking a lot about the ephemerality of things, isn't it. There's a line in a clipping song that I keep whispering to myself — partly earworm, partly echolalia, partly because I find it funny — "death is coming for you but you already knew that". momento mori has never been so catchy!
- got a new mic and have really enjoyed playing around with it so far. it's a rode nt-usb mini! I got the fancy boom arm that comes with it too as I know I can't be trusted to hold a mic close enough to my face, or not to just leave it uselessly far away on the desk. i think my set up is now (... or perhaps has been for a while) excessive for someone who has released as few videos as I have, but hopefully I'll be rectifying that soon.
- trying very hard not to set any new challenges for myself, but (everyone heaving a collective sigh, I'm sure) I do want to be more focused on my research questions in tech (mostly frontend questions like getting really good at CSS, but also computer science fundamentals and permacomputing and "digitally-enabled flourishing" type stuff). Does anyone know of any communities for independent research that aren't focused on any one particular topic? I've always enjoyed the cross-pollination you get when you have interested people of different disciplines in a room, online and off. Perhaps it works less well than I think if there's not an overarching focus?
- i'm also struggling with time management, in that i feel like i don't want to manage it but i do want to know what i've done with it! I've tried doing formal time audits, where you track every fifteen - thirty minutes of what with what you've done, but i struggle with that even for a week as i forget i'm meant to be doing it. i've tried many apps; the closest to being good for me was daily but it turns out it doesn't have an android app, and even i am not on my computer literally all day so it doesn't work for me. I'm trying to take a less granular approach in capacities, day logging in a bullet journal flavoured way, but most of my entries for last week are blank so not a winner either. I guess i should think more about WHY i want to track my time, and i think intentionality is the reason. i want to know i am trying to do things i like or care about with my time. should probably build something, i have been thinking about this for years.
- can't remember and not going to check if i talked about this last week, but i've been thinking a lot about community as a prerequisite for lasting change. it's very difficult (if not outright impossible) to make a huge, permanent shift in any area without having a group of people that agree with you or gave you the power to change it. i struggle a lot with this as i feel like — possibly obviously from the above about time tracking — that individuals should be able to create these changes on some level, and i act like i believe it explicitly more than i'd like. i guess some people would then shift their attention towards trying to win friends and influence people but it's just not in my wheelhouse, i have to actually like people sadly.
Feel free to reach out with burning questions, comments or suggestions!