As part of my new goal to “spend time with other people more” I went to a quest room today. We did well. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the Korean food we got on our way back I would have preferred to stay home.

Films Making a Comeback (for me)

After two years of distraction, I’m finally able to enjoy full movies again.

I know the “book review” podcast with my partner is actuallyally happening because we spent several hours tidying up and setting up microphones “just to see if the setup works”. That’s waaaaay further than we’ve gotten with any of our other creative ideas.

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson absolutely blowing my mind with every chapter. I’m sorry to all the other books I’ve abandoned while the Cosmere abducted me, but this is just too good.

It’s been nice using WordPress for many years, but I really miss micro-blogging and so I’ve moved all my crap to micro.blog. Plus: the perk of built-in podcast hosting = I might actually get to making the podcast I’ve been planning to make for 5+ years.

Mistborn by Brian Sanderson

I absolutely blazed my way through the first three books of Brian Sanderson's "Mistborn" series. These books are as good as all the fantasy dorks tell you it is. The first book is, essentially, "what if Ocean's 11, but there's people that use metals to get magic powers?" Like, that premise, in and of itself, should sell the book. But also the writing is great, the pacing is great, there's all these twists and turns in the plot that come out of left field.

An album I'm liking: Blip

BLIP by NAHreally & The Expert

FL Studio 24 update

This is my first "free lifetime update" with FL Studio and it feels *great*. It's not that I *need* all the new features (though the QOL improvements are welcome), but when a similarly "minor" upgrade came for Ableton I had to shell out, like, $150. So yeah. I'm really happy with my decision to switch to FL Studio. That said — if anyone wants an Ableton 12 license (suite), let me know!

Death of the Follower

Patreon and Jack Conte aren't perfect, but for quite a while when they made predictions/placed bets on changes in the creator economy — they were generally right. [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwn6-8XpIuE) All the "platforms" are definitely not prioritizing the "follow" mechanic as much as they used to. Arguably the only one that does is Substack, but even they're doubling down on the "social media" aspect of their product lately. And while I'll always be "

New album by Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, STILL RIFT

<a href="https://previndustries.bandcamp.com/album/service-merchandise">Service Merchandise by Previous Industries</a> I've been really waiting for this one to come out. So much so that I actually pre-ordered it!

Sk8 Dreams Animation

This animation made me feel young again. [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6S5spsVOZs)

Performance

For the past couple of days my Morning Pages™️ have been about "performance" in one way or another. On Sunday I wrote about how I got so ingraned in the daily performance of "professional marketing person" that I've kinda forgotten what it's like to be myself — a regular human being. On Monday I ended up writing about how much I enjoyed performing in plays at school, on stage with my band, and just generally being someone who enjoys attention when hanging out with a group of people.

I find it funny how it seems like everyone in the game is enjoying their life and having fun, even though they are going through an apocalyptic event and it's happening right in front of them. They're all like "shit, the castles floating, some guy from 10,000 years ago wants to kill us all, but dont you just love my new mushroom hat? Anyway, I gotta go hang up some signs within spitting distance to a literal portal to hell.

A running list of things I don't like

Why spend loads of time writing about things you hate when you can create one mega-post and just update it as you find new things you don't like? [mastodon.social/@davatron...](https://mastodon.social/@davatron5000/112479724323610058/embed) So A List of Things I Don't Like russia AI being in places where it doesn't belong The gap between what I want to make and what I'm capable of making The fact that awesome "discovery" (Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc.

When's the perfect time to share?

I'm trying to figure out when's the perfect time to share that you're going through something. Is there a perfect time? I read a lot of blog posts/tweets/instagram posts. I watch even more YouTube videos. People are constantly going through shit (it do be like that sometimes). And, like, I definitely know that "as shit hits the fan" is not a great time to share personal struggles. But it is a great time to share "

Two more useless (to me) items sold and shipped!

Long day of selling off old junk. I feel exhausted, but on the plus side I gave a few possessions a new life in a new home instead of a slow decay in a landfill.

After YEARS of being a “pen dude” I’ve rediscovered that ACTUALLY mechanical pencils are the best. :)

Art takes a long time

[www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W5ix1nQU4g) My brain is always running at 100km/h, so any time I see artists take their time to work on their art it's this huge wake-up call about how making things actually takes time. And then I see this video where Fran Meneses dedicates time to practicing how to draw (even though she's a great illustrator already!) it really shocks me. I'm impatient, okay? I'll cycle through hundreds of project ideas, start maybe 10 of them, and …

Starting Out

After 10 years of thinking about it (overthinking, really) I've finally started making a video for YouTube. As all "first" videos go, this one is about how it's the first video I'm making. I hate that. But as much as videos about making videos absolutely GRIND MY GEARS, I need to get this navel-gazing bullshit out of the way before I can get to some of the actual topics I want to make videos about.

Project Hail Mary

VERY good book. Just finished it today. Arguably even better than The Martian. DEFINITELY better than Artemis. Couldn't put it down. Sucks because i had a sleepless night, but does go to show how awesome and captivating the story is.

Mixing Visualized

If you get past the weird aesthetic choices (and BOY are they weird) and learn to enjoy them, then this is an amazing resource for understanding how sound mixing works (especially in the context of making music): [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjOdqZFvhY)

Funny Books (from NYT)

Whenever I finish a good book (it was Ready Player One this time), I find myself in a reading slump. So, I'm going to keep a list of resources to refer to when I'm looking for a new book to check out from the library. This article from the New York Times has a list of 22 of the funniest novels since Catch 22 (which I should probably finish at some point).

Make Your Own Rules by Andrew Huang

I was not excited when Andrew Huang announced that he would be writing a book. I've been online long enough to be weary of "books written by YouTubers". But that was unfair of me. Andrew Huang has been a goldmine of awesome and entertaining videos, helpful and useful advice, as well as a very large discography interesting and groovy music. So, when a few excerpts started coming out and when Andrew made a few videos talking about some of the things he writes about in the book — I was sold.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Just finished reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown. For me this was a very "front loaded" self-help book (one of my least favorite kinds). Most of the advice that the book has to offer is revealed in the introductory chapters. What fallows, then, is just a bunch of examples of how the advice can be applied and the different little tweaks you might need to make to your life to apply the practice of essentialism.