Back in 2013, I made the decision to stop using the phrase I’m Busy and it’s associated attempt to shut down conversations or engender pity/respect from people who asked I was going. I did pretty good with it for a while, but words like busy creep back into your vocabulary if you don’t monitor for […]
It took me an incredibly long time to read Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say That We Have Nothing, but that’s not a reflection of quality. It’s an intense kind of book, dealing with an extended family of musicians during the Cultural Revolution in China, and the fall-out on their children’s lives afterwards. I frequently hit […]
The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own […]
It appears I had a bunch of good ideas back in February, many of which were derailed by life rolls and complications far beyond my control. One of these was the regular STATUS POST as a lead-in to the Sunday Circle, and I’m going to try and back into the groove of such things. HAPPIEST […]
Back in March, before my dad passed away, I’d started the Vintage Links project in order to put some structure around clearing my overstocked “To Read” folder. At time of writing, there are about 600 of them remaining, and I’m going full Marie Kondo on those fuckers: everything is checked, thanks, and either deleted or […]
My partner bought me a copy of Ibi Zaboi’s Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix for my birthday earlier this year, and she’s been waiting anxiously for me to read it and let her know what I thought. In a moment of rather unfortunate tijming, I spent my birthday in a hospital this year, sitting […]
When my partner first moved in and we struggled to find the space for everything in my tiny one-bedroom, the old 5-disc changer stereo got put away for a stretch. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved that stereo. Much as I enjoy being able to log onto Youtube and track down pretty much any […]
Over the weekend I sat down and wrote a proper whiteboard for the coming week, logging all the things on my schedule day-by-day and breaking down specific goals into component tasks. It gets to live in front of my desk-top, one of the first things I see when I step out of the bedroom in […]
Preorders for One Last First Date Before The End of the World are now live on the usual retail sites, and its on sale at the shiny, dedicated fan price of .99 cents (US) for the next thirty days. What do you do when your date tells you Ragnarök starts next Tuesday? Logan expected his […]
The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own […]
I’ve spent a good chunk of the last week reading through Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The Psychology of Success. It’s an interesting book, presenting concepts that you’ve probably come across online in all manner of articles about praising effort instead of intelligence, or assuming character traits and intelligence are fixed rather than malleable. Mostly, though, I […]
Warren Ellis is going through a run where he posts content from his late, lamented Morning.Computer site to his shiny new WarrenEllis.ltd home. Which means I got a chance to revisit one of those posts where every writer I know feels incredibly seen: …never ask anyone who’s just finished a book if they’re happy with […]
