I noticed I don’t want to make monthly posts anymore, so I won’t. What function they served should be done by other types of more spontaneous post. But what are those functions?
- (The public facing parts of) A high level life check-in
- A chance to post a collection of some of the shorter thoughts I’ve had
- Short book reviews
I’m always trying to get myself to do 1, because it guards against slow subtle trends that I’d notice if I periodically stepped back to look at my life. But most of the time things are fine so there’s nothing to catch, or they’re too subtle for me to catch when I sit down to review while not being in the mood to review. I’m generally big on doing things that are important even if you’re not in the mood for them, but I think life reviews are different. They do require the mood, actually.
Spectrum of chores where “I’m not in the mood” is a bad reason to avoid it vs a good reason to avoid:
- BAD REASON
- Cleaning – routine
- Answering email
- Meditation
- Physical exercise
- Nonfiction blogging
- Creative commitment – technical skill development (practice pieces, analysis of others’ work)
- Cleaning – high level (like a big reorganization of stuff)
- Creative commitment – ideation (the real stuff where you sit down and create work you care about)
- Relationship check-in
- Monthly life review
- GOOD REASON
Shorter thoughts
Should probably go into a large webpage or folder that’s updated incrementally. This will be the most recognizable descendant of the monthly roundup format. I should ideally get in the habit of collecting my short posts from everywhere else here also, but I probably won’t.
Links
What I had for June are:
- Another literacy link: https://www.tumblr.com/catchaspark/783383958392111104
- A project up for adoption: making better air purifiers https://www.jefftk.com/p/better-air-purifiers
I keep thinking about literacy and finding links interesting (although I have few original thoughts or opinions of my own, yet) so I should clearly have a page for “literacy: short thoughts and references”.
Harder to say where the project link should go. I initially collected it because I thought I might have the time. I definitely don’t. I think someone should do it, and it’ll be fun to do it. Should it go in its own boost link? I don’t think so. Maybe I should have a miscellaneous page… or even better: a “links” directory with one huge file where links go by default. As patterns emerge I’ll make subfiles in the links directory.
Book reviews
I keep referencing even short book reviews I made, by using my website’s “link to a subheading” feature. I think even short ones should go into their own page.