changes

The last rays of the sun transfigured the water tower, the freeway overpasses, and the tops of the pins on the bowling alley sign, as I sat at my computer in an emptied office. I hadn’t noticed the sky darkening as I tapped away on my keyboard, compulsively shift-tabbing the cursor, re-reading, revising, substituting words, deleting phrases, and reorganizing paragraphs.

I still didn’t notice how late it was when my wife called me up wondering where I was and what I was doing, if I was okay. It was only as I dumbly attempted to explain to her why I was still at work that I recognized my folly. I was deep in creative flow, composing a short essay. I thought it was pretty good, and it was nearly complete.  It had some humor, it had a detailed history of past work on the subject, and it had what I think are some promising ideas for the topic moving forward. Sounds great, right? I haven’t yet disclosed a key detail, which is that it was about to be sent in reply to an email I received with a simple question asked in a single sentence.

My wife recommended I not hit send on that email just then, and I took her advice. It is still in my drafts. It was not all for naught, though. As I closed up the office and drove home from work, I was finally ably to put a name to a needed work productivity goal (and probably professional relationship goal, but I hate thinking about relationships) around what I think must be a rather unique personal challenge - I should not be writing The Great American Email.

Getting lost in composing detailed narratives and obsessively reworking sentences is within my full purview here in nowhereland, but it is usually not all that helpful or productive in an email at work. So, if I recognize that I am starting to write an extensive email, I need to take pause and figure out if it should actually be a phone call, an item for a meeting, a note that I don’t share with anyone yet, a sentence or two summary, or if it really needs to be anything at all. After all, I know people skip or delete my emails, sometimes maybe I can skip or delete things, too. 

I need to recognize that sometimes I just like reading myself writing - case in point, this very website, of which I may well be the only reader. Please don’t try to like, subscribe, or leave a comment, because none of those things are possible here. (Well, I guess “subscribe” is possible, if you are into that ancient protocol, RSS.)

TL;DR here’s that quality productivity self-help life hack you can share with all your business bros and professional contacts on LinkedIn - DON’T WRITE THE GREAT AMERICAN EMAIL.

(That is, unless your work is composing an email newsletter that you hope will get picked up by The Atlantic or make you a Substack millionaire – in that case you should definitely try to write the Great American Email. The school district doesn’t pay me for that sort of work, though.)

Standalone post link: Writing the Great American Email

Yay holidays! Yay traditions! Yay America! Yay humans! We’re the best! We’re smarter than turkeys!

Standalone post link: Yay Thanksgiving!

Quick note about this site (joshuaw.xyz / jdwhiting.com)

This site is in more flux than ever at the moment, as I continue to rethink and evolve in how I want to use not only this site but also interact with others via the internet beyond this site.

I’m in the midst of making significant updates to the organization, flow, and functionality, all towards the end that I can start posting regularly again. I have a detailed list of tasks and ideas, but I’ll spare you.

I hope to make a lot of headway this week, but in the meantime some existing pages/links do not work, or do not work in the way I ultimately want them to work.

Thanks for your patience? (whoever you might be)

Standalone post link: Quick note about this site

Running log of my favorite albums and musical works released in 2022. It will be updated throughout the year, and even after.

Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Things I’ve posted about this album: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You by Big Thief
Things I’ve posted about this artist: Big Thief

Modern Nature: Island of Noise

Things I’ve posted about this album: Island of Noise by Modern Nature
Things I’ve posted about this artist: Modern Nature

Nilüfer Yanya: PAINLESS

Things I’ve posted about this album: PAINLESS by Nilüfer Yanya
Things I’ve posted about this artist: Nilüfer Yanya

bloopy bloop

Standalone post link: My Favorite Music of 2022

Started playing Gris tonight. Stunning and mysterious game.

There were a couple of points where I wasn’t sure if I was ‘going the right way’ or not, but it was so beautiful that I didn’t really care. So far I’ve ‘brought back’ the color red and I’ve gained the ability to make my dress into a stone block, which is super useful. Will definitely be continuing with this game.

Standalone post link: Playing Gris

Maybe a little too excited that I managed to create a hugo shortcode to do this hide/show toggle function in any post now:

Maybe I should generalize it and share the actual template code here and on GitHub? Never actually done that sort of thing, and yet I’m constantly stealing from others who have…

Standalone post link: Hide Show Excitement

I had in mind a new reading update rule for 2022 - I wasn’t going to post a reading update about any book (neither here nor on Goodreads) until I was at least 10-15% of the way into the book.

But I forgot my rule, and now the books I barely started and haven’t continued to read are hanging over my head, and I hate all you big invisible jerks for holding me silently accountable for every random thing I post here.

Just kidding. I do have a lot of false starts, and I do hate the weird pressure and embarrassment that comes from posting about a book and then not following through, even though people probably aren’t actually paying any attention.

Maybe I should set the line at 20 percent…

Ditto to posting about “favorite” music prematurely. I want to deliberately wait until I have truly listened to something 3-4 times, or purchased a physical copy, because I’m impressionable. I’m doing a bit better on the music front this year, though.

Standalone post link: The 15% rule for Reading Updates

This post’s notes about breadcrumbs helped me figure out some things with my taxonomy list pages today.

In other words, I updated my taxonomy list page template, so as to prepare for a move toward building and surfacing more topic-based pages, supplemented by changelogs such as this.

I also added another instance of the Taxonomy Tree (a.k.a. Tree of Life, a.k.a. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. Cast Out from the Digital Garden, a.k.a. Site Taxonomy) to the home page of the website, utilizing my now increasingly ubiquitous [+/-] toggle buttons. Again, a move I’m making as I explore ideas around digital gardening. I’m not actually doing digital gardening yet so I don’t have anything to link to - yet.

This is the first semi-official changelog for joshuaw.xyz, and is also the start of me trying to be better about documenting and crediting people when I learn something or pilfer code and ideas from their blog posts.

Standalone post link: 20220613 Changelog - Taxonomy List Pages

I’m going forward by going back…

I let this site go dormant again, but that was not for lack of unpublished notes, pictures, ideas, etc. – I have physical and digital notebooks full of stuff.

Basically: I get busy, and I also get shy.

What to do about all that could’ve / would’ve stuff?

This a perennial quandary for me, and typically an impediment to moving forward with adding new things to the site.

But this time I’m going to try to not let it hold me back. My intentions are to just start posting things if I feel like it, even if they are “outdated.”

So I may be posting some backdated items.

But more than that, I’m gradually going to build and surface more topic-based static pages on this site, and de-emphasize the reverse-chronological-status-update feed tyranny of the “notes.”

I’m starting to think and design in terms of digital gardening, though I still have a lot to read and learn and look at before I implement.

One of my first plots/beds should probably be documenting this learning and exploring I am doing in regards to digital gardening and site design. Need to build the raised bed and add compost before I plant the seeds, though…

Standalone post link: Going Forward / Going Back

I apparently live in a version of the internet where Derrida’s 1995 lecture-turned-book Archive Fever is trending.

Not long ago, in thinking about the various possibilities of nonfiction writing (more exploration on that later on this site if I turn this into a real digital garden and get around to it) I suddenly recalled reading Derrida’s Dessemination back as a college sophomore in Intro to Critical Theory with a weird sort of fondness for the puns and linguistic games he played. That playfulness kind of infuriated me at the time, but now I think I’m ready for it. (Also the stakes are low for me now - I don’t have a grade to get.) I thought I should maybe read it again or try some more Derrida sometime, just for kicks and weird writing ideas. Looks like Archive Fever may be the thing to read.

I found it, or some version of it, on JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/465144

(You can read 100 articles a month for free on JSTOR if you are not associated with an institution of higher learning or library which provides access to JSTOR, and I am not associated with such an institution. Like I said, stakes are low.)

Or you could probably find a PDF by a little Googling and clicking around on stuff. A sketchy link to some artist’s PDF download that was probably for some old class and that they probably don’t even realize is publicly accessible seems like an appropriate way to access something called Archive Fever, anyway.

Standalone post link: archivefever.eth