Good morning, me and good morning you, I am of course your painfully photogenic host John Henry and this is the “Morning Me!”
A few new things going on today. First, when I’m finished writing this I’m going to record it as video and audio and it will be published on my multimedia channels and social media in multiple formats, including showing up in audio as a new edition of my old “In My Room” podcast (for now).
For right now I’m doing this as no-frills as it gets, just me and a mic and camera reading my morning newsletter. You may get the idea there’s more to all of this than I’ve gone into detail about and you’re right: essentially the MM newsletter is me building and testing the infrastructure to build all this up properly into what it was supposed to be in the first place, way back when. I want to be sure I can get a daily morning thing out in three formats regularly without that itself becoming the full-time thing.
I know that these kinds of personal musings and “what’s up” content aren’t any big moneymaker or traffic attraction, and they’re not intended to be. There are three levels to “why” I’m doing this kind of content.
The first, I’ve already said: this is where I work with new ideas and refine them and see how they are able to spin out as production, if I need to make adjustments before I’m committing myself to “the public” as an information source on a regular schedule, that kind of thing.
So for today’s Morning Me what’ll happen is I’m going to finish writing this, then set up and record it on webcam real quick. I’ll probably go “naked” today with maybe just a url bug onscreen for the sake of getting this out while it’s still morning anywhere in the western hemisphere, then spend some time today in Premiere working up both traditional lower third graphics I can reuse specifically for this show and some kind of vertical framework so I can put a thirty-second pointer up for each show as well.
Again you can probably see what I’m doing here – like a stand up comedian running new material unannounced in a small club or a band throwing a private party to debut songs. The second reason I’m babbling on so much about myself and the work I’m doing here right now is that it’s as close to zero effort source material as it gets. I don’t have to read the news or do any research to write these morning newsletters, I just write them. Harder than it sounds sometimes, but generally less time consuming than trying to do “real” news and information content. This allows me to focus on creating the infrastructure and meta-content necessary to ensure the actual content gets the best possible treatment I can give it.
The third level is transparency and disclosure and making sure I’m communicating with you folks properly. Everything I do is crowdfunded, and I feel like that gives me some obligation to keep in touch with you about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.
All of this in service of being able to create better content and get it out to you faster, with broader distribution scope and therefore more positive impact in the world.
As of this moment I’ve got nearly an hour in just writing this and figuring out what I was going to say – deleted a LOT of content for the sake of keeping it short – so I’m gonna let both of us get out of here, just want to say on the way out how much I appreciate you taking the time and supporting my work with your engagement and contributions. It’s a slow build but we’re on the ramp and rolling now, and things are looking very, very positive. Thank you all for being part of that, stay tuned right here and watch how it all plays out, and don’t forget to stay engaged, and of course if you’re able and willing you can help support the whole thing multiple ways including PayPal, Patreon, and more, you can find out more about all that at http://passionate-cyan-owl.192-250-227-172.cpanel.site/money! For now this is JH and the Morning Me saying see you tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-channel!
Hey there folks and welcome to another Morning Me, I’m your host and let’s get right into it.
Experienced a bit of a setback yesterday as the tickling sensation of rising depression in the back of my head took over and everything went “meh.” Even while I was writing the MM I was like “nah, I’m fine,” and then as soon as it went out my motivation collapsed like a balloon with all the air let out. (NB: I also forgot to schedule it properly so it went out last night to some places, and this morning to LinkedIn. Harumph.)
No matter what I tried to pick up and do, it felt like a useless waste of time that nobody would care about and I just shouldn’t bother…and that’s depression, for me. Unfortunately I’ve learned the hard way over the years that all I can do is “walk it off.” Trying to force my brain to cooperate when it doesn’t want to, just makes it cooperate less…and yes, I sometimes have to think of my own mind as something separate from me just to be able to get a good look at it.
“Normally” there’s a voice track like that in my head at all times, just a constant muttering subtext of all the most negative fears and anxieties I can imagine cavorting around and insisting they’re reality. A year or so on a low dosage of lithium gave me time to develop some internal tools to sort of turn the volume down on that track of my brain so it’s not obtrusive, but those tools can get less reliable when I’m tired or pushing myself hard, and I have definitely been pushing myself hard for the last few weeks. To say nothing of the lingering effects of having terminated nearly every toxic relationship in my life over the last two and a half years, a loss that is fundamentally good for me and everyone around me but still hurts and always will because a lot of those folks should’ve been gone a long time ago and I really hoped they’d get it together and learn some things about how to act before it came to the point I had to walk away. I don’t want to go on about that crap though, it’s the past and it’s going to stay there; dwelling on that stuff definitely will send me into a spiraling depression, and no.
Energy Boost
Plus I’ve felt better mentally (as I’ve mentioned) than I have in YEARS. And even now I don’t have any sense that I’m going to be out days or weeks in a depressive paralysis, just feeling that weight crush a little harder than it should be, due to me going full throttle with little in the way of rest or break for about three weeks straight now. So I was kind of expecting this to happen, and honestly have been surprised that it didn’t happen sooner, but fortunately after fifty years of living in this brain I’m starting to get a handle on it a little bit. Indeed, part of the reason I’m doing all this infrastructure stuff and working on the guts of the site and the project management tools and all that is to help mitigate the impact of depression; have something in the bank for those days when it’s just not there for me. Because sometimes, it isn’t. I think mostly it’s just my brain saying hey let’s take five I’m kinda tired from all this running. That and I haven’t had any kind of income for six days, am broke, and have some bills coming up in the next two or three days (autoposter and something else) so that adds anxiety and tension and is probably a contributor as well.
At any rate, the brain decided to call in yesterday so not much got done in terms of public-facing work, although I did pick at some bits and pieces. Mostly I spent the day trying to be outside in the sunshine, do some walking, get some air, and stave off a deeper dive because not only can’t I afford it, it sucks and I just don’t want to go there anymore so I’m doing all I can to avoid it, including making myself get out of bed when I woke up this morning instead of going back to sleep, and not skipping this newsletter 🙂 I know I have a habit of going all out into things and then burning out fast, so overall behind everything going on right now I’m also trying to be extra super mindful of my mental state and how my mind and body are communicating with me, so maybe I can gain understanding how not to trigger depression to whatever extent that’s in my control.
Yesterday I made the choice (barely a choice, really, but it was) to let my brain have its way and take a day off. Today I’m making the other choice and forcing myself to get some things done because another part of depression for me is that it’s self-reinforcing; I get depressed and let something slip, then I get MORE depressed ABOUT letting something slip, then I (usually metaphorically) curl up in a ball for a few weeks and everything slips, and I’m just not doing that crap this time. I can’t afford it and I’m sick of allowing the broken parts of my mind have unchallenged veto power over the parts that aren’t. So I’m trying to find ways to take some of that power while balancing it with whatever legitimate needs (like rest and food) my brain is dysfunctionally trying to communicate to me when it decides to go south.
Yes, your suspicions are correct, writing this newsletter and putting these thoughts into it is part of how I work that out. It’s important that I say out loud that I’m making choices, that I reinforce to myself the idea that I really am in control of my own mind now matter how confusing and alien it sometimes seems, and I really do have the power and strength to keep myself moving forward even when my own mind is trying to push me back, and it’s okay to temper that power and strength with the wisdom and humility to recognize when my mind is telling me that it’s hit a limit.
Let me shoot this out and get back on that debt piece, it’s already almost entirely written, just needs some additional fleshing out and editing, not sure yet if it’s gonna stop at two parts or go to three, but I’ll get at least one out before COB today…and if I can sit down and focus properly, depending on the cooperation level of my brain, I ought to be able to get something out before noon.
NB: All of this does play back in what I was saying yesterday about switching gears a bit and moving back into more production than structure for a while as I could feel my brain getting bored with all the fiddling and tweaking on the back end. Lots more to do, but nothing that I can’t let myself set aside in favor of content work for a bit.
Good morning folks it’s time again for the “Morning Me!” Let’s take a look around at what’s happening in JH’s world today…
Item: Prestidigitation: Brett Favre is catching headlines all over the place today for saying the country was in better shape under TFG.
Those headlines are conveniently crowding out the headlines about Brett Favre filing paperwork yesterday to be dismissed from the gigantic welfare fraud lawsuit he’s part of for taking millions of dollars intended to help needy families in exchange for speaking fees and other perks.
Guess what we’re not gonna be talking about today?
Item: Legendary professional wrestler Superstar Billy Graham passed away. It remains to be seen whether Jesse Ventura or Hulk Hogan will take the opportunity to also pass away and then claim they did it first. Without the Superstar, half the wrestling business would have never existed.
Item: the rest of this is pretty dark so here’s something upbeat to dull the edge. Since we were talking about prestidigitation above…here’s Randy Savage surprising you with a little magic from “the cream of the crop” in one of the all-time classic wrestling promos, this one from the lead-up to Wrestlemania III. Just watch it – and watch Savage artfully cover his own flubs without a hitch. There’s a reason I respect the hell out of old-school wrestlers, those cats would come out and cut these promos off the tops of their heads, maybe a little back-planning like the creamers here, and just GO, and I love that. From my own work I know that may not always be how you get the cleanest and shiniest cuts, but it is how you get to the real emotion you need to project for a quality performance…even if it’s something as “goofy” as a professional wrestling match.
Item: I’m thinking today about how this guy in NYC who murdered Jordan Neely on the subway has already raised $2+ million for his defense fund. I’m thinking about it because over on LinkedIn, I’m seeing a lot of things like people saying they find it “troubling” that this happens.
I find it troubling every time this happens, and it happens often one way or another. Here’s why it happens:
The simple reality is fascists, bigots, racists and other bullies support their heroes passionately, enthusiastically, and with LOTS of money, and “we” – “we” being “everyone who isn’t a fascist, bigot, racist, or bully” – don’t.
They send their kids deliberately to infiltate and take ownership of our systems and processes. We don’t.
They throw money at people who are out actually doing the things they want done, like murdering Black people and anti-capitalist/anti-fascist protesters. We don’t.
We refuse.
Our people – whatever the melanin content of their skin or inclinations of their sexuality or genetics of their gender – who are out doing it starve in the streets while being harangued online as “beggars” and “grifters” while we all sit around telling each other how smart and clever we are for getting on this hot new Doterra or Crossfit trend.
Our people have to beg for ramen on the internet and half the time can’t even get that.
Our people are left to couch surf and desperately beg for subsistence while also desperately begging us to pull our heads out of our asses.
Our people who are really doing the work get ignored while “Occupy Democrats” and “Worldstar Hip Hop” and “TMZ” rake in millions by appealing to our egos.
Until that changes, you’re gonna keep seeing this happen. Why wouldn’t it? It’s rewarding.
When someone like me – and I mean “like me,” not some prefab instapundit who made one viral tweet and immediately sold out to the DNC or who’s actually working FOR the DNC while pretending to be an “independent voice” like JoJoFromJerz or BrooklynDadDefiant, the only difference between them and Rittenhouse is the gun – makes $2.5 million dollars for saying that murdering black people and anti-fascists is wrong, and Kyle Rittenhouse needs a public defender because nobody cares to support a murderer, maybe we’ll be getting somewhere. Right now the evidence is clear: the fascists want to fash far more than the anti-fascists want them to stop.
That’s a big, big problem everywhere, and not just because I’m bitter and angry about the paltry rewards of a life of public service that *isn’t* prefabricated and based entirely on privilege. Until we’re willing to put as much time, energy, and money into doing right as the fascists are willing to put into rewarding wrong, they’re gonna keep winning.
I know that’s not a happy uplifting thought for your morning and I’m sorry for that, but it is a true thought and it ought to be motivating you and giving you strength of purpose and focus.
What can YOU do? Lots of people supporting Rittenhouse have no money…but they have no problem telling their friends to pitch in. Lots of people supporting Rittenhouse and others like him have no resources, but they spread every bit of related propaganda around like it was engraved on stone tablets and handed directly to Moses by God. The Rittenhouse supporters aren’t off in a little klatch somewhere arguing intently over whether the kid “deserves” support because he used a Bushmaster and a third of the people in the crowd prefer Remington. The terror funders aren’t worrying about whether Aunt Sally will be offended. The terror funders are THERE. FOR. IT.
And we…aren’t.
Fascism appeals to the inherently obedient and submissive. They do what they’re told and march in straight lines, and while I’m definitely one for doing what I want and marching how I want it’s undeniable that there are times when that rigid obedience and unquestioning fealty are an enormous tactical and strategic advantage. This is the problem of the left: the left is inherently disobedient and averse to being herded…which ironically makes us that much easier to herd when a bad actor comes along.
That’s why actual grifters like Matt “Being Liberal” Desmond, the “Occupy Democrats” Rivero brothers, and the collection of fraudulent astroturf faketivists collected under the “ReallyAmerican1” banner (itself a barely-disclosed account 100% owned and operated by the Democratic Party, and NOT the progressive wing!), among a host of others, are making millions of dollars off you while the real power of the left, the people with integrity and meaningful ideological commitment, ends up dropping off and having to go pick up a job flipping burgers or sweeping floors.
NOT murdering innocent people doesn’t even pay minimum wage, but killing just one homeless black guy or antifa protestor is worth more than I’ve made, in total, in my entire life.
Those are your “American Values.”
When we fix that problem maybe we’ll stop seeing bigots get away with murder.
Until the people who have the moral high ground decide it’s worth fighting to defend, we’ll keep losing.
In lighter news, I took most of yesterday offline to handle some meatspace business like cleaning my living space and getting some laundry done, a little light maintenance for my host.
As I write this, I frankly haven’t decided yet which of the several things on my plate I’m going to eat today, but it’ll be something. Probably get the second part of that National Debt piece up, I don’t want that to get cold before it’s done.
Beyond that I’ll probably spend the day creating project nodes and subcontent on JHUS. I feel like this last couple of weeks of frenetic construction activity has me getting a bit burned out on structure and meta-work, and I suspect but cannot currently confirm that the next few weeks will pivot back toward actual content, working up video and audio that I can maintain a regular schedule on, and getting a couple more regular content features rolled out. Then when I’ve got a routine set on that stuff so a five minute video isn’t an all-day project, I’ll get back to the meta stuff and build more on that, see what I can fit in. (By way of comparison, as of this moment I’ve got…45 minutes into this post, it’ll be 1:15 or so before I’m done, and I’m hoping to get this into A/V as well as text, regularly, soon…so that’s another hour or so after writing to record, edit, and process everything before posting. That’s too long – two hours a day just to say hello? So I’m working on ways to maximize efficiency on that whole process before I even start doing it, and then that work should translate pretty easily and quickly to other work.)
Sorry it wasn’t all bright and shiny today. I’m still in a fine mood, mental health is doing great other than worrying about money, and my workrate is still through the roof. I don’t know how long the tiger’s gonna run this time – at *some* point it’s a given that I’m going to hit a depression and things will slow down for a minute, that’s just the nature of my mental illness – but I’m going to hold on tight and ride that sucker until it drops, and right now it’s staying nice and steady, more so than probably at any time in my memory.
So let me shut up and get back to work. Love y’all, please don’t forget to throw some support my way if you can. Unlike Kyle Rittenhouse I don’t have people throwing millions of dollars at me.
It is the morning and I am me so let’s get rolling on the Morning Me! A little late today – I got started find but then a friend (actually a friend’s kid, although given they’re in their 20’s “kid” isn’t really the right word) stopped by needing a little ear and advice so I broke off this and talked with them for a couple of hours. Time well spent, but not outwardly productive for my purposes here.
Work continues apace and I’m happy with it. Finally having a project management tool that does what I need it to do has been a real game-changer. We’re still in the stage where it’s eating up as much time as its saving while I learn all the things it can do and how to use it for my explicit purposes, but it’s definitely doing the job.
I think I’m about done with the “building” part of things for the most part at JHUS now. There’s still a lot of content and nodes and sections to be added, but the key thing for me the last week or so has been building a process that facilitates easy and efficient content creation and other work. There’s a million years of other work that needs doing too, but one thing at a time. Right now I feel like I have things in place such that you’ll start seeing a shift back toward content rather than infrastructure in the next week or so.
The AfterParty newsletters went out yesterday, this week’s for supporters and last week’s for everyone else. I am not anticipating a lot of output today, as I have a number of offline tasks that need attending from basic human needs to rearranging my room, and I anticipate that will absorb most of my truly useful energy for the day, plus it’ll probably have me tied up for at least four or five hours.
I’ve still got at least one and probably two more segments of the “National Debt” section to kick out; if I get any writing time in today and there are published results, it’ll probably end up being part 2 of that. Plus I’ve still got several dozen screenshots to go through from Fallout and will likely build a bunch of sub-set pages for that, but a lot of that work isn’t at all time-sensitive so I’m not rushed about it. Still, I do want to get that content built up because it’s already drawing traffic organically via search and that’s a good sign that the work’s worth doing and people are interested in it.
Whole lot of stuff bouncing around in the ol’ brain this morning, but what’s going to really happen is I’m going to finish this quick post, account for the time on it, and then disconnect and get on this room; I told my roommate that if she got home and I wasn’t on it she had my permission to climb my ass about it, and she’s due home in like three hours.
Right now I’m broadly and roughly thinking that my next “project” will be getting another daily-ish post like this happening that deals with everything else in the world that isn’t me – a quick news take, probably closer to SNL’s “Weekend Update” or the news coverage segments Jon Stewart used to often open his shows with. “Here’s a thing that happened, here’s 1-4 quick sentences deconstructing it and baking it down and telling you what it really means, probably with a smart-ass twist at the end.”
One that’s rolling, my current plan is to take that and this and add video and audio versions with each drop. Not sure how far I’ll take that, but we’ll see. I feel like there’s definitely part of my audience who fall into that space of folks who like to have that quick little morning shot and then a little dose of afternoon news and comment.
It dawns on me that I’m basically setting myself up like a modern Paul Harvey, that was his gimmick right? He had the “News & Comment” segments that would run like 3-5 minutes on your local radio station during their news break, and then “The Rest Of The Story” which would be an essay and you’re probably all familiar with it especially if you’re over forty. Funny story: he basically started his career at WKZO radio, which was also WKZO-TV when I was growing up. WKZO radio is still around, WKZO-TV is now WWMT. They’re local, the “KZO” obviously stands for “Kalamazoo.” Just a funny-quirky-synchronicity that crossed my mind as I was describing how I currently see things unfolding over the next few months. As always, Card Subject To Change.
Anyway, beyond that is where we start looking at getting back to regularly creating video and audio content, getting back to podcasting and maybe doing an hour-long livestream every week. I’m trying to stay super mindful about committing to more work than I can realistically accomplish, that’s another long-standing habit of mine (my aunts used to say my eyes are bigger than my stomach; that was about the amount of food I’d eat at the holiday table but the principle persists – it’s not “biting off more than I can chew” so much as “swallowing more than I can digest,” if that’s not a bit too grossly gastrointestinal.
I may have said this yesterday and forgotten I said it, but today I plan to follow through: this is the last day I’ll be distributing the “Morning Me” outside of my “me” platforms – the JH page at FB, my twitter, etc. – and leaving Custode, WeAntiFascists, and Progressive American out of it. The point of MM is to be a little chunk of me for my readers and whatever relevance it has to those pages will be, at best, secondary if it exists at all. That’s not to say I’m dumping those pages, just trying to be a little more mindful that everything I do doesn’t have to be seen everywhere I do things.
And it’s almost not even morning anymore so let me get the heck out of here and I’ll talk with y’all later.
Good morning folks and welcome to the show, let’s see what’s rattling around in the ol’ brainpan today…
Got a ton of new stuff kicked out yesterday, lot of backend work on this new project management tool. I’m super excited about that, I’ve been trying for years to find just the right PM tool for me and the way I work, and this one seems to be doing the job. I’ve got some playing around to do with it yet, but I think it’s going to be a powerful help for my work and my personal life as well.
I haven’t yet figured out how, but I’m going to make the reporting tool viewable for supporters and add it to the “perk” list, since I figure details like that are in the package of stuff that pretty much nobody’s going to be interested in except supporters.
Fact is the tool is for me, first and foremost, to help me stay organized and stop losing good ideas to the ongoing rush of trying to keep up with my own brain. Sharing it and showing everyone else is just a lucky artifact of its abilities that allows me some transparency while also not getting stuck in a loop of writing a twenty-minute Facebook status every time I have a thought I need to chew on or a little bit of happy fluff I want to share. Like this:
Health insurance companies should be outlawed and if you work for one you should make them fire you and start collecting unemployment. There’s no reason for health insurance, at least in the way we have it, to exist in a nation that respects its people.
– John Henry
I don’t want to get too deep into this today because I’ve got the JH AfterParty newsletter to get released. As I’ve mentioned previously I’m trying to get in the habit of having that ready to drop for the advance edition by 9am on Tuesdays, and then the public release of the previous weeks’ edition at noon (all times Eastern). This week because I just started this “Morning Me” thing and didn’t want to skip it on the second day, I went ahead and decided to let the AfterParty be a little late because I didn’t finish it last night like I should’ve. In the future, if there’s a conflict the AfterParty will take precedence and the MM will get skipped.
I should note here also that while I loosely intend to try to get one of these out daily, I’m not committing to it. My personal goal is to try to hold the line at no fewer than four “Morning Me” posts per week.
I noticed last night that my FB login app for the comment system is not working properly, which leads me to suspect the rest of the social logins aren’t working either. I’ll probably have to take half a day or a day in the next few to hack that out and see what the problem is.
Sidebar: if y’all notice something broken, tell me. Please. Thanks.
I really can’t be effusive enough about my current state of mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve never “had it together” at the level I do right now, in terms of how I’m approaching and accomplishing my work. I know there’s a lot of noise and confusion right now because I’m doing a lot of things in many different directions, but it should get more steady and stable and predictable around here steadily and quickly.
On that note, I’m giving a few days to make sure I haven’t overwhelmed myself but I’m probably going to try to work up a second daily (or sorta-daily) issue newsletter, like this one but about news, events, etc. that are catching my eye or potentially going to work up into a bigger piece. A bit like a short version of the excellent Heather Cox Richardson newsletter (man, I can get 120wpm freehand when I’m really cranking it out, she must be using a voice parser or have a couple of people typing for her or something, I seriously have no idea how she creates such long, comprehensive newsletters every day….and I’m the guy most people are like TOO MANY WORDS SLOW DOWN WITH ALL THE WORDS ITS TOO MUCH! I’ll try to get a link to her substack in an upcoming MM.
And with that I’m going to get on with my day. First priority is getting this JH AfterParty newsletter written, and then I’m back into content creation wherever I pick up, probably will get to work on the second part of that series about the national debt.
I’m probably going to stop distributing the MM to my “other” FB pages like Antifa, Progressive American, and Custode. This newsletter is really just about me for my people, my way of staying in touch as my work pulls me ever farther from the levels of social media engagement I’m used to. As such, I think cranking it out to those pages would be more annoying than interesting to their readers.
Please don’t forget my existence is predicated on your support so please remember to lean hard on those like and share buttons. We’re past the point in history where worrying about being “spammy” is even on the radar. Flood the net with JH as best you can – plenty of content to do it with right here! – and JH is gonna keep working on making sure you’ve got plenty of material to work with.
Love y’all, don’t forget to pitch in few if you can at the money page. (Sustained support is critical! Far better to have forty supporters sending me five bucks a month than have one person send me $250 one time. Check out the options for weekly and monthly support via PayPal and Patreon at that link.) There’ll be a lot more coming on that, too, but that conversation is better held at the AfterParty. Have a happy upbeat song to get your day off to a great start! You can always count on George Harrison for a smile…
As part of this whole process I’m going through of finally nailing myself down into good work habits and maximum productivity, I’m facing the not-entirely-pleasant reality that writing social media updates about what I’ve got going on is a fairly important part of my thinking process; it’s where I work out ideas and often will find flaws and gaps in my own thinking or planning as I’m writing.
Obviously there are two flaws involved there: the first is that it doesn’t have to be done on social media and the second is that it’s content and ought to be treated that way. Ergo, more blog posts like this one and I hope you dig it. I’ll probably end up playing with some kind of official cute daily title thing or whatever (I did, see below), but taking this time to focus on exactly what my goals are for the day and how I intend to achieve them is important to making each day I have left as productive – on my own terms and for my own purposes – as they can possibly be. That’ll be the last meta comment on that whole thing, at least for now, let’s commence with the thoughts that actually prompted this like 90 minutes ago and then yeah.
A screenshot of the ProjeQtOr ticket for this blog post.
So I have this tool called “ProjeQtOr” running on a subdomain now, and it seems to be just what I needed (an earlier promising candidate turned out to be a false start). Good, solid project management, works great for a one-person show but still easily scalable and scopable to include stuff like some CRM and collaboration on projects. I’ve got it running on a subdomain right now (https://projects.johnhenry.us – you can go peek if you want but all you’ll see is a login screen).
I still need to spend some time learning the reporting tools to get everything I want out of it, including opening it up for public view as a supporter perk and using it to help generate work reports for inclusion in the Saturday Substack, which is where this whole side-track with the project/task management stuff started (again – I’ve taken many runs at this, but I’m finally in an environment where I have a hope of making it stick). Once I do that I’ll figure out a way to make it visible to users with access and tell them how to access it.
From my POV it’s a necessary sanity tool to keep everything I’m doing in order and stop forgetting and leaving off on things – there are probably three dozen unfinished articles on my blog! – but also the public-facing functionality that I may be able to put to use is significant and constitutes a legitimate value add for folks who are supporting my work to be able to see more closely what exactly they’re supporting and how it’s getting done.
Other than that…let’s see, I’ve got this blog post, the piece about the national debt, continuing to learn and develop with this new tool while simultaneously using it for its intended purpose which is to help me keep track of what I’m doing, when, and for how long. I did force myself to take a few hours off last night and got some new Fallout 4 screenshots…I think I’ve talked enough for here and now. I really appreciate everyone’s patience during this exciting and energetic period of major growth and development on my end; I’m doing my best to stay visible so you know I’m working and not just off screwing around somewhere.
(NTS: Maybe get into a habit of a “morning me” blog post and then something else that’s a sort of “morning news review” where folks can just get a peek at what I’ve been seeing in the news and what I think of it, small-dose stuff some of which will likely end up developing into more substantial content in time…and oh hey, half an hour later I’ve created a new project node with two levels, a new project for a new newsletter titled “morning me” that I’ll do kinda daily, and turned this into the first issue…but I have other work to do and I’ve already got a couple of hours in this plus a couple more undocumented fiddling with infrastructure and yeah. I’ll go more into what I’m thinking for this in the next edition, for now I gotta run, see you soon!)
