Life updates too intangible for About, but not timely enough for the Blog.
September 2024
And just like that, it’s a year later. Yikes.
How are you doing, good? Good. I’m good. Things are going well. I travelled to the US for the first time. I gave my first content design talk. I wrote some new blog posts (with more planned and even more started and abandoned). Had some professional breakthroughs. Rediscovered my love of orange hoodies. Changed the colour scheme of this very website to reflect my love of orange hoodies. Had even more inner-critiques about not writing or reading as much as I’d like. So it goes.
Otherwise, here’s what else I did. Read some books, drank some wine, cooked some good food, and helped design a whole bunch of design software. Life’s what you make it.
Right now I’m sitting in the great hall of the Immigration Museum, at another No Typewriters No Talking event. I’ve come to realise that Jackson’s little project is pretty much the best forcing function I have to actually go and write a thing (even a small thing like this). The only other one being doing it on an airplane between bouts of dozing or watching Into the Spider-Verse for the umpteenth time. And that’s OK. It’s all OK.
He’s got a bunch more planned in the coming months so I hope to be sharing more updates here very soon!
It was a lot of fun hearing from Derek Sivers, creator of this Now page concept, when he got in touch asking about Australian book distribution. A small, very small, sign that the open web still wants to survive.
Oh, another thing. I need to add some secret messages to this website the way Kevin Roose did on his website. BRB.
Back. I did it. Let’s see if it works. AI Engine Optimisation, what a time to be alive.
Alright, time for me to bounce. Off to apply for Australian citizenship! In the Immigration Museum, no less. How fitting.
End of now stats
Listening to: Trains rattling along the viaduct, echoing footsteps, a slight scribbling of pens on fine paper
Reading: Just started Lords of Strategy, and about to start The Gutenberg Parentheses.
Feeling: Tense, but also a little thirsty. Thirstense? There’s probably a word for it in German.
September 2023
Greetings, Now.
I’m writing this post in a dimly-lit workspace, as part of my friend Jackson’s workshop No Typewriters, No Talking. There is certainly neither of either. What there is, though, are some striking video projections. The phrase “Sea of names” also appears regularly. Is this a reference to the debut album from A Perfect Circle? Who’s to say. I mean, Jackson might. But as stated above, no talking.
We are in crunch time at work. I refer to it to some colleagues as ‘goblin mode’. It’s simultaneously stressful — some of the most stressed I’ve ever been (my dissertation-era hypochondria from 2010-11 has returned, hello old friend) — combined with some of the most thrilling, interesting, downright fun stuff I never thought in a million years I’d get to work on.
On balance, of course, I’m still grateful for the opportunities and experiences. I’m going to be a coach of others very soon! How cool is that!! But, man. I could use a break.
Anywho, I’m hoping to get some other self-site stuff done in this short hour I have, so I’m signing off, for now. See you on the other side, September.
End of now stats
Listening to: The hum of a fan, the soft typing of other people on their laptops.
Reading: I finished The Rainforest! It was a slog. Should’ve just read The Geography of Genius again. I’m wondering if I should check out that Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. The Ashlee Vance book from 2016 was pretty good, but John Siracusa’s critique of Isaacson’s Steve Jobs is pretty hard to come back from. I probably will.
Feeling: Upper hemispheric acceptance, lower hemispheric uncertainty.
June 2023
Here’s my first Now post! I’ve been meaning to write one of these for, literally, years. Ever since I saw Owen Williams make one. I love the concept of it, and learning Derek Sivers is behind it is a cool easter egg.
With a wonderful trip to France and Switzerland now firmly behind us, life has returned to a wintery routine back in Melbourne. Unfortunately, the natural alarm clock of jet lag — that sweet spot a week in where you’re not crashing out anymore but still waking up bolt upright before dawn — has faded away too. But no matter, the external shock of travel has broken my previous bad habits of late nights and late mornings. At least until there’s another Canva Create to work on.
Speaking of work, things are going quite well. I received feedback on my last half year of output, and the biggest callout was that I should invest more time in doing documentation. This is an area I’ve always struggled in, going right back to middle school when my Coca Cola-addicted technology teacher Mr Boot (yes really) said I found journaling “tedious”. Why a technology class required all its attendees to do journaling, I don’t know, though I do recall him monologuing about how a pencil is itself a piece of technology. I think he wanted all us 12 year olds to find that a profound insight. Frankly all we wanted to do was play the first Half Life.
Anyway. This overhaul of my personal website is an extension of this newfound push into documenting things more consistently, so here I go.
But while I’m pushing into documenting things more on my own web domain, I’m biting the bullet and shuttering my current crop of nascent side hustles. The rest of this paragraph pays tribute to them. Goodbye, Writehacks. You were a good idea that was completely supplanted by ChatGPT, which eliminated the need to learn few-shot prompts in the OpenAI playground. To have succeeded you’d have needed to be a daily AI newsletter like Ben’s Bites, or I would have had to become a Twitter threadboi where I had ‘The AI Guy’ in my bio (a fate worse than death). See you later, Valcontent. Your words live on in my Blog. I’m also keeping your web domain in case I ever start a freelance content design business. You both join the graveyard of failure, in the same plot row as my humanities-in-tech blog (The Humanitist) and many, many, many others.
Congratulations ButteryChardonnays, you are the last one standing (for now), but let’s reassess when the annual SquareSpace bill rolls around. My recent visits to Bordeaux and Champagne have widened my wine appetite dramatically, so it’s not looking good.
Honestly, taking all these half-executed ideas out into a field and putting them out of their misery has been wonderfully freeing. I’m no longer racked with guilt at not spending my off-hours working on them. No longer haunted by ideas of what they could be, but unwilling to put in the effort to have these visions realised. And that’s OK! On a recent episode of one of my favourite podcasts, Sharp Tech, co-host Ben nailed it when he talked about how the key attribute to a successful creator career on the Internet was consistency. I do not have the required consistency. It feels like middle school journalling, which is to say, terribly tedious.
Still, one thing that gives me hope is that each time one of these side hustles comes around, they get closer and closer to actually becoming a worthwhile thing. Writehacks was getting real traffic and had real people on the mailing list! At this rate, I’ll strike digital gold in 2033. Can’t wait 🙄
End of now stats
Listening to: The sound of one of my cats, Daughter, snoring on her new Kmart blanket (it’s a cold Melbourne winter day)
Reading: Slowly making my way through The Rainforest . Innovation policy as written by a couple of business school stalwarts is not a page turner. The Geography of Genius is a much better approach to the same idea.
Feeling: A certain kind of peace.