Studio update, cats, sharing your work & organization

Guys, girls, other,

Let’s do a proper newsletter this month. No grander theme or topic to dissect. Just a bunch of things that have either happened or I’ve thought about, that I believe could be of value for other people to know.

Studio update

Let’s start with what you are all here for: what’s the progress been on the daylight studio that we’re building? Glad you asked.

There are two major updates: we have a floor(!) and the walls are white now. Finally. The ceiling is now white too, by the way. It took a lot of preparation to get here (how much dirt and gunk can be stuck in a room...?) but it was the most rewarding job I’ve done in a long time. Once all metals were primed in their coatings, and all walls were cleaned and dust-free, we could finally stick some Flexa Powerdeck on there. My god, what is that stuff nice to work with? A few strokes on an ugly wall can turn a visual mess into a serene masterpiece.

The walls need a second coating, which I will probably get to next week. Then we treat all metals to their final coating. Once that’s done, we can finally lay down that floor we picked up at the beginning of July (thanks again, Rob, for always being there to help when we need it!)

When the painting and flooring is done, we can do one final round of cleaning (those windows need some love) and then can focus on what needs to be inside of the space.

The goodness of cats

We have the clingiest cats. That’s our fault and we accept that. We kinda love them for it, even though they’re annoying sometimes. They follow you around the house no matter where you go, for whatever duration of time. As long as they’re awake, they are close by. We can’t take a step without stumbling over them, always scared to step on a tail or tiny paws.

But you know what else they are, even more so? The sweetest of boys, the cutest of cuddle creatures, the prettiest of felines. I can recognize that their clinginess is an act of love. They want to be close out of pure, silly, blissfully ignorant, goodness. I can feel it radiating from them. I don’t think there’s a relationship in my life more pure than the one I have with these cats. Some humans come close, of course they do, but interpersonal human relationships are far too complex and layered to never have the slightest hint of friction. As humans we are always working on love (and if you're not, you should), these cats just show it unconditionally.

With these cats it’s simple. “If you’re nice to me, I’m nice to you,” I can see them thinking. “And if you’re nice to me, I will love you. Forever, no matter what you go through in life, no matter how you feel. Feed me, pet me, treat me right. I will be your friend, forever in my life.”

So with that in mind, we accept their insistence on proximity. We shove them around the house to make sure they are following us. Can’t be in a room by myself anymore, sometimes. Tapping away on my keyboard is not the same when there isn’t a pile of fur in the corner somewhere. I like to think they’re watching over us. Keeping tabs on how secure their shelter is, sure, but in the process making sure we are doing well. Well enough to provide, to take care for them in this scary world they know so little of, to accept their love in return. They need us for safety, we need them for comfort and companionship.

About newsletters not being read

I asked on a new Discord server I recently joined, how people deal with their friends/family/acquaintances being subscribed to their newsletters but most of them not actively reading it.

One of the replies I got was “I write for myself, anything else is a bonus”. I sat with that thought for a while and it’s perhaps one I don’t fully align myself with. Although I respect that opinion, I think it’s too individualistic and focussed on the intrinsic drive from which we write these things.

I would argue that the act of making your work is, in fact, not as selfish.

I write because I have things to externalize. Externalization aims to project these thoughts, feelings, and perceptions onto the outside world. And since the outside world contains a lot of humans, I think externalization aims to share these internal processes with other humans. The ultimate goal? Perhaps it’s just to get some feedback. See how well I understand the things I’m projecting. Understand my own self-worth a little more within the context of what’s out there.

The thought of sharing my writing, is often as exciting as making it. The reason I argue this, is because I think this excitement stems from a primal nature embedded deep within our genetics. The reason you want to make things, is because you want to contribute in a way (to your in-groups but also to society as a whole), so you share the making of said things, hoping other people will like that you are making those things, effectively affirming to you that you are spending your limited time wisely (because they like it), so now you get to enjoy the benefits that come with a community like that (a social safety net), and that makes you feel good about yourself. Ergo, making things makes you feel good about yourself. Sharing that is integral to the process.

Does that make sense, or do you have a different view? I’m also just a guy with some thoughts, so my inbox is open if you feel inclined to share too.

Keeping it short

Without going into too much detail, we’re keeping it short, remember, my mind has been all over the place lately. I want to do so many things at once. Nothing gets done. I am terrible at being in a pending state. I can deal with it only for so long before it starts to impact me. So I’m on a mission again. A mission towards organization. Beautiful, sweet, organization. A clear surrounding, with a clear plan, makes for a clear mind. It has been true for me for as long as I can remember. And I’m at one of those moments once again. I need some oversight. But there’s work to do.

First, I have to get that daylight studio done. I need that space to start breathing. Because I need some room to breathe myself. The hard part is almost over, building it, so we can start focusing on what’s hopefully a little more fun, decorating it.

I have some cleaning up to do at home. My office space is a mess. I let it come to that because my head is a mess. Ordering my thoughts starts with ordering my drawers, cabinets, and closets. It’s probably busy work that feels like progress, although it’s usually procrastination in disguise. Still, it’s part of the process. If it gets me in the right headspace, then that’s already enough.

Okay so that’s my physical world organized. My digital life is doing quite alright already. I just PARA-method my way through everything. It’s been working well so far. Even got the company I work for to adopt it too. What was missing was some clarity on the things I’m working on, and where they sit in the hierarchy of importance and prevalence. So how do I tackle that? More busy work, of course. This time by reorganizing my website’s homepage, to better showcase the things I’m working on as well as outline my previous work.

Some other things to note here:

• I’m working on a new website for an initiative I hope to share soon. The studio will fulfill a role in that too. The initiative will hopefully be able to serve as the foundation for all our creative efforts, but we’ll see how things pan out. I know that’s being overly vague right now, but I don’t have anything concrete to share yet. Because it’s occupying a large part of my mental capacity, I feel like it makes sense to mention it.
• I’m seriously considering hitting ‘pause’ on Closer until AI developments have made some significant leaps. I outline why in issue #016.
• My Things I Have Seen project has been renamed to Covering. The previous name was always a working title, but this new one makes more sense within the wider ecosystem of the projects I’m building out. A short reasoning for this name can be found on the updated project page.
• Speaking of that ecosystem, I had this latent project laying around called Crossing (see what’s happening here?). If you want to know what that’s about, I recommend visiting that dedicated project page.
• Finally, to make sense of this all, I introduced a dedicated Walking page. It’s very bare bones right now, but at least it provides an overview of the (lack of) progress but, more importantly, underlines the intentionality with which I do these walks.

Did I keep things short? Probably still not. I’ll try my best over the upcoming months to adhere to it a little more because I want to focus on my Covering project again. So let’s finish that daylight studio, and finish that new website, then quit sitting behind a computer all day and instead go out into the world again.

Mitch