frozen octopus

Ideas seem to be flowing a little faster when I start writing them down on a notecard with a 6B pencil. Even though a 6B pencil is the arch enemy of a left-handed person, the line it makes is a thing of beauty. It's like if writing with a pencil felt like writing with a Sharpie marker.

Getting ideas off the notecard and to the posted stage has a couple extra steps. After the first time I tried it though, I am seeing how valuable they are.

The first is scanning the notecard with the camera app and getting the thought to the laptop. I thought I would hate this step by I am now seeing the light about it. This barrier of entry is keeping a lot of mental clutter out of my laptop. Some people keep every thought as a trigger to make connections for new ideas. I tend to find the old ideas distracting and having them around makes me tidy files instead of generate ideas.

The next step is cleaning the borked text after I scan it. This step forces me to read what I wrote. Self-editing is the least fun thing for me so this dreaded step actually happens when I use analog and digital together instead of one or the other.

This is a work in progress but hopefully it will help with the trouble I was having yesterday.

I am supposed to be promoting our show on Saturday. Don't know why but I'm just not feeling talkative or creative this week. Add to that three more shows coming up in three weeks. It's daunting (for me).

It might be the multiple spots to post on. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least nine places that I need to post show info.

Not posting is not an option so I am trying to brainstorm a way that will make doing all this feel like more magical. Clearly some sort of automation is needed.

A tomato seed from our veranda compost bucket is going crazy. We now, unintentionally, have a two foot tall, healthy tomato plant growing in our apartment.

If you touch it, your hands smell like tomato. It's starting to flower so next is hopefully a tomato.

The power of compost.

I was thinking about what is the one sentence I would use to summarize January 2024 while watching bands at a show last night. This drum pattern kept coming up in my mind:

R L Both Both

This simple drum pattern blew my mind in January. It's a runway to get off the ground and reach other drum patterns.

Once a week I am visiting designmanifestos.org and reading a design manifesto. They are very inspiring so it's hard to resist temptation to go through a lot of them each visit.