Slight adjustment to the blog today. A couple of things were starting to bug me, so I did a little course correction this morning.

The moon phase posting schedule is really fun, but I need to adjust it a bit. There have been a couple of times I was excited to post, and it was in between the quarters. So what do I do then? Should I wait to post on the quarter? That is too much thinking for me. I should post when there is something to post.

So I added a moon phase selector to blog posts. That way, I can note when in the moon cycle the post was posted at least. That also means there I can use the full range of moon phases. I'll be losing the "moon as post trigger," but I think later on it might be fun to see if there are any trends with the phases and my posts.

The second thing this will do is remove some visual clutter in the post titles. I was including the moon phases in the post title. It was cool for a while. As more and more posts had them, the titles were starting to get more difficult to look at, I think. So back to the normal titles and then add the moon phase emoji is fine.

I've folded in tidying up my reminders and events in to my morning writing. It's turning out to be a thing that I look forward to which rules while the brain is halfway awake. Basically I've been adding why and how to tasks as a writing exercise.

With each task I have, I am supposed to be including what the outcome will look like and the next action(s). I can through about five to seven of them done within the 200 word goal. It is extra work for task creation for sure.

As I slowly get through them all, each task is becoming like a mini-story. It reads like...

• Do this
• Because you need things to be like this
• So do this first

I don't know why but reading the first two lines build up momentum. Then when I get to the third one, I have some speed built up and seem to do the thing more then when I don't include the "why" and "how". It's like every time my brain wants to act like a misbehaving child, the retort is in the next line.

Reminders: "Do this task"

Brain: "Why the eff should I?"

Reminders: "Because this is what success will look like."

Brain: "I don't know how."

Reminders: "Do this first."

New moon time coming up and that means a fresh cycle for the blog posts. Originally, I was going to be strict using the moon as a writing prompt. I had themes for each one, but that waned a bit. I do use the moon as the trigger to write the post still, but it is more fun to write about things exciting or interesting instead of the rigid schedule.

Using the moon as the schedule has made me more interested in the less famous phases of it as well. So, this is still a good way to blog for me.

The new moon is the recent phase, and that was supposed to be writing about things I am starting in on. Probably the most recent thing is that I am practicing drawing from a book called The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. There is a drawing practice schedule in it that I am following loosely.

I bring some random paper in some form with me and do the exercise while killing time somewhere. Cafe time is good. Waiting for someone shopping or whatever is good. Waiting for some band to start is good.

Also, my favorite thing so far with the book is that the author is s.｡oO particular about pencils. I laughed out loud when the first exercise called for a 3B pencil on newsprint-level paper. I proudly have those on my desk.

Did a three day 1000s of Cats tour of Kyushu last weekend. I had two ways to get a blog post up and four ways to get thoughts out of my mind. I didn't use any of them barely at all. I was so in the moment doing the shows and looking around that documenting didn't cross my mind. Besides the work tasks I had to do, I didn't do most of my daily routine things. Stuff like morning writing and the like.

I got back at it once I got home but kind of interesting everything went out the window for a couple days. I thought I would get a lot of writing done on the Shinkansen but I was traveling with someone. Too much looking out the window and talking about the upcoming adventures.

We have another tour like this one coming up in November so I am trying to come up with a strategy. My mind keeps arriving at dictating micro thoughts with the watch and then combining them at the end of the day if I don't have morning writing time. At least it is something rather than a three day streak gap.

It also makes me curious if I should make the medium I use for morning writing randomized. The choices would be paper (then scanned), watch (voice dictation), phone (typing on small keyboard), iPad (writing with apple pencil), and laptop (typical keyboard). Probably a good idea to keep my skills up with all of them at a steady pace.

Gonna go set that up and see how it goes.

Lately I've been obsessed with seeing how small of a device I can get a thing done on and then doing it on the smallest device. The thing that prompted me to do this is all of the old radio shows I listen to. They dreamed of being able to do the things on a watch in the 1930s. There are comics and radio shows from then that can back this up.

So for them I've been trying to get as many tasks to watch level as possible. It's fun. It's a great way to dig into the device and see what it can do. Searching for answers leads to rabbit holes where I find the things I didn't think of. If a thing can't be done on the watch, it gets bumped to phone then iPad/laptop.

There is a point to this besides having fun and learning the devices. Sometimes you are stuck somewhere. I always have paper/writing device. I always have the watch. I always have the phone. With the larger screens, it is between sometimes and never. Being able to chop through little tasks when I have energy to burn because there is a typhoon outside rules. So if I can shift the little things I can do to "watch and up" level or "phone and up" then I have some things to do.

I have noticed some things are easy to get myself to do on the watch and some take a lot of willpower. Listening to podcasts and music from it for example. At the beginning it was a lot quicker to pick up the phone or turn on sound from the laptop. That's just because I am not pro at the watch yet. Also the idea of listening to something on a tiny speaker when there is a little bigger speaker close was a thing. Do I really need to listen to someone talking about tech in full lush stereo all the time though?

Getting thoughts out of the head and into a list rules on the watch. With the new os update, the Notes app is so nice to have. For as much as I like Shortcuts, I need to revisit them on the watch. They were clunky at best for me earlier but I bet that is sorted out.

I love this blog and blogging. Realizing I need a system for this thing though. I need a stricter date I have to publish on but is still fun somehow. Daily is too much like a streak. Weekly is too much like a work calendar. It needs to be more frequent than monthly.

While I was looking at my calendar the moon phase jumped out again. I love the moon phases. The moon rules. Using the moon phases as a posting calendar is perfect for me. It is always up in the sky so it would be an amazing blog post prompt.

There is also a nice option of post amount options. You get once a month (full), bi-monthly (full, new), quarterly, or even eight times (gibbous, crescent).

I also like how, if I went with quarterly for example, the posts would be essentially weekly but out-of-sync with the usual calendar. Also get the added bonus of the emoji.

I am going to try a moon phase blog and come up with a theme or something for each phase. When I have thoughts, ideas, or find things to share I can sort them into the correct phase. Hopefully when it is time to post on each phase there will be a bucket filled with things to post.

I am noticing a slowdown in my posting here lately.

I think it might be from having to post so many show promotions. I feel like I already wrote something, then I don't write anything here.

It also could be partly from the news lately.

Sometimes when the world news is really big/hot, it has a dampening effect on wanting to write.

It could be partly the weather. It is getting hot here quickly, and I am not used to it yet.

The humidity in Japan is a lot different than where I am from. It always takes a while to adjust.

It could be the device as well. I love my laptop, but I am a little sick of typing lately.

I should switch to the iPad and Apple Pencil, maybe. There is also pencil, paper, and then scanning with the phone, which works very well actually.

Not a huge issue, but something is off lately, and course correction is in order. Listing out all the excuses, gets them out into the light and they dry up.

Before moving my blog to Drupal, this site, I was using a platform called Blot. I loved Blot because I would write a post in a text editor, tag it, Hazel would move it to a folder in Dropbox, and it would publish itself. It was magical. Before that, I was using something else (probably Blogger). Anyways, I have a lot of random blog posts in backups and text files lying around.

It is a minor annoyance mostly because there is a ton of music I listened to that I want to remember. Yet I don't want to read a bunch of my history because I am more of an in-the-moment or looking forward type. So I keep kicking the task of getting the music into this site down the road.

Yesterday i read a quote from Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem that made me want to tackle the task of getting things into here.

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."

The whole passage that came from is even better. You should go check it out.

That made me think that I need to just get all the old posts into here little by little. Each day, go through the past years and add that day to the blog. Get the past albums I listened to into here. Look for old things I wanted to do and see if they can be done easily now. See if there are any patterns like "I seem to always think the same thing on 05/14" or anything else. Mainly, try to make looking back enjoyable while I get things all in one spot.

Weird that was such a hard decision but I already feel a little lighter which rules.

I am starting to become devout about using lead-ins for the morning writing brainstorm mind-clear I do daily. Things come out slow when I sit down to a keyboard and try to get all the things out of my brain.

But if I use a lead-in to start a phrase and use it over and over, words pour out of my head. They probably let my mind get up to speed before making the jump to the thought. The repetition is soothing as well.

Examples

• "My day looks like I need to..."
• "I don't know but..."
• "Today I need to..."

If the thing I need to do or remember is a cymbal crash, then the lead-in would be the drum fill leading up to it.

Starting off on a new pencil today.

It is a Mono100 3B made by Tombow. It has a softer lead than the F pencil I just finished. There is still a faint bit of hardness to it, though. Like soft with a little grain to it. The B side of the HB Scale is darker, so it is easier to read all the random notes I scribble down.

I think for a lefty like me, 3B is kind of perfect. As you get further into the B scale, you start to see the lead on your hand more. 3B isn't so bad for that.