Words. Ideas. Actions.

22 February 2023

I’m starting to have a love/hate relationship with these posts. I miss Tweeting, that’s for sure. But I don’t know that these are scratching the same itch. I mean, I guess I know they’re not. So, why am I still doing them? It’s a great question. Let’s try and tackle that today.

If these are truly an alternative outlet for Tweets, fine. The logic breaks down very quickly in a number of ways, but we’ll pretend it’s an apples-to-apples comparison for now. I enjoy the freedom from specific subjects that Tweeting had for me. Want to talk about the World Cup? Great! Need to vent about changes to a product you used to spend most waking hours thinking about? Have at it! Have some ideas about our elected officials? Share them widely! But with that boundlessness also comes indecision. It’s like having access to almost every song ever released and not knowing what to listen to. And this choice overload ends up leading to posts like this. 

To describe what’s happening in real time, I started typing today because I have a self-imposed deadline. I basically only have this hour to craft these words and post them before a series of other commitments take over the rest of my day. Obviously, there is no real downside to not getting one of these up tonight. But I like continuing the streak. At least until I’m out of Soundgarden songs to use as titles for these things. With these constraints in mind, I started typing that first paragraph up there. And now, we’re here. Together. Are you still with me? Good. Now, back to that choice overload idea. 

Because I have such free rein, sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to write about. But I still want to write. Obviously, I could do that on my own without subjecting you to having to read these, but forcing myself to post every weekday holds me accountable, at least to myself, to my own commitment. I need to keep writing if I want to get better at writing. I think that’s how that works.  But what to write about. The anniversary of the war in Ukraine? The way 2024 primaries are shaping up? Content moderation in front of the Supreme Court? My hopes to get into the Noise Pop show I want to see tonight? When news or events drive me in a typing direction, those posts usually come quickly. But days like these tend to overwhelm me. Too much freedom. So, we end up with another post about process. But I find those fascinating.

As I explore more of my abilities and collaboration tendencies, I find that I love learning about how other people tackle problems. Are they list makers, like me? Do they use the motivation of a deadline to push their ideas further? Can they “kill their darlings” quickly in order to serve a better idea? The more we talk about our creative processes, the better we’d all be, I think. There’s no magic sauce to coming up with a great idea. And If I can co-opt a technique from you that makes me better at creative problem solving, then I’m all ears. For me, it’s a lot like setting up a guitar with an alternate or unusual tuning. At the very least, I’ll be trying to create something completely new to me. Stretching myself like that, hopefully, leads to me learning something new. And that’s never a bad thing, in my book.

See you tomorrow?

06 February 2023

Friday’s post was not as controversial as I anticipated. I was hoping for a vigorous defense about albums I missed or long rants about an undeserving inclusion or even a — deserved — interrogation about decades-long gaps between some of the chosen albums. But none of that came to pass, save for Spencer replying with his own well-thought-out list. Which leads me to conclude my list, like the albums on it, is definitely, completely perfect. So, let’s move on to something potentially more controversial: artificial intelligence.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles and opinion pieces about the rise, use, and fears around AI, specifically text-generating bots. And with today’s announcement of Google’s public entry into the text-generating AI playing field, I thought it might be the right time to talk about how I think these services will change writing on the web, and how I’m feeling about that. In a word, I’m excited.

Now, I completely understand the reservations people have about technology coming for their jobs and livelihoods. But that worry isn’t new. Technological advancements have forced people to adapt since the invention of the wheel. Today’s worries, I think, are just specific to a set of craftspeople who haven’t had to worry about their roles being automated out of existence ever before. Potentially. These advancements shouldn’t be feared, though, they should be embraced. Writers are so much more than sentence generators, which is — essentially — all these emerging technologies are. And even if we only use them to create sentences, there will always be a need to make them better. Or more targeted. Or even used as inspiration. And that’s the part which has animated me recently.

I’ve used a few of these posts to talk about creativity. It is the only part of me I know I’ll never run out of. I’m not saying that to brag, it’s just, at the very least, each day brings many new opportunities for me to make something new. Today, it’s this post. But some days, it’s a simple doodle. Or a guitar riff. Or even an impromptu bedtime story for a very discerning nine-year-old. And it’s that creativity I’m looking forward to putting to use with all of the AI that is emerging. 

Most of my creative endeavors, I’ll admit, are made better with a collaborator. As a writer, I’m much better working with an editor. When I was in bands, the songs that we came up with as a group at practice, or as the result of bouncing ideas back and forth rather than bringing in a finished tune, were the ones which proved more popular and endured in our live sets longest. And when I was focused on UX problems, especially at Twitter, my work and our solutions were much better thought out (and simpler to implement and use) when I had a designer and researcher to collaborate with on solutions. Thinking about the future of my work, or even ideas I have for personal projects, I feel almost overwhelmed with opportunities to work with these different text generators. Essentially, they are more than tools; they’re like collaborators which never sleep. 

The key to using them as more than tools, and not simply fearing that they’ll replace me, goes back to the creativity I need to employ to turn a potential competitor into a collaborator. Sure, I can plug something simple into the prompt, get the results, and call it a day. But what I’m looking forward to is using the prompt as a starting point on a journey to something entirely unique. All powered by me, working to make both the prompt and the resulting answer better and better until the final product is something decidedly new and unexpected. 

Let’s say I wasn’t to create a new story for bedtime. I could simply ask one of these services to, “Create a bedtime story for a nine-year-old girl.” But with a little imagination, I could start a little further down the path to something more interesting, like, “Create a rhyming bedtime story about a pair of cucumbers who get stuck in a museum elevator while on their way to see their friend’s show about floral arrangements.” No matter what comes out, we‘re already into brand new territory as far as bedtime stories go around here. And, depending on what the result is, I get to take that as just a starting point for the rest of the pair’s journey.

Basically, I want to spend all day typing prompts into all the text generators, coming up with new ideas for stories or writing prompts or just flights of fancy. It all sounds much more interesting than updating my résumé. Say, that gives me an idea …

See you tomorrow?

09 January 2023

Tonight, I want to start with an admission. It’s not going to be revelatory. In fact, I’ve alluded to it here before. But it’s something that’s been bothering me most of the weekend. And then, today’s episode of The Gist compounded matters. During Mike Pesca’s interview with Eric Newcomer, they discussed the difference between people writing for journalistic publications and those writing for their own. And the chasm of resources, in both time and money, which then dictates what each can cover. I think my posts are a great example of this, which leads me back to my admission: These posts are quick and mostly easy for me to do because they’re limited only by my creativity and opinions. Both of which, it seems, I have in abundance. 

When I think I have an idea for each day’s post, I usually jot it down in my notebook. It can be an idea spurred by a podcast episode, like today, or a book I just finished (I’m percolating a post about Michelle Obama’s recent book), or some new turmoil at Twitter. In all of these cases, though, the words which get put down here are nothing more than the thoughts in my head. There’s very little reporting. Or research. Or even fact checking. It’s just the mental machinations from a man of a certain age, usually sitting on his couch watching a soccer match on his DVR, while the rest of his family sleeps. Mainly because this is keeping him from Tweeting. Or reading Tweets. But I think, eventually, I want to use this time for something more.  

That same notebook where I capture ideas for what I want to write about — or, more precisely, practice writing about — also includes a long list of notions which would take more time and effort to tell well. There are ideas for content design talks I want to give. And pitches for 33⅓ books I’d love to write. Even a few short stories I used to tell our daughter at bedtime that I want to preserve, maybe even so other parents can tell their kids (ugh, that’s just a pretentious way of trying to avoid saying, “I think I want to write a children’s book or two”). As it is, I’m instead spending the evening hours sorting through a morass of news headlines and podcast episodes and revelations about music or soccer or politics which have passed though my grey matter during the daylight hours, trying to capture a snapshot of where my head was at today. Besides at work. 

As I sit here tonight, I’m not really sure what that means for these posts going forward. I know that I enjoy writing them. I’m not sure they’re anything more than a vanity project at this point, though. Or, maybe, something my family can look back on to get a sense of where my mind was at during what seems like these very strange, liminal times. So, in that sense, they serve a purpose. But, eventually, I think I’ll want to spend the time and energy I’m using putting these together on something that will work better together as a longer-form collection. I have lots of ideas, but much like Pesca and Newcomer mentioned, they’ll take focused time and attention. And intention, something I’d like to get better at in 2023. For now, I hope these little missives are providing the right amount of distractions — both for me and for you — from whatever else it is that could be a different use of our time. The upside is that if I’m writing these, at least I’m writing, And if practice makes perfect, that can’t be all bad. 

See you tomorrow?

03 January 2023

Tonight’s post is going to be a little reactive, I’ll admit. It comes in the wake of recent news that Foo Fighters look to carry on without Taylor Hawkins. And I’m having a hard time with that. I know that my thoughts are far from unbiased, but even as just a fan, I still feel conflicted. 

They are consistent, however. In my mind, there’s something a little sacred about a band’s lineup. I know that may be a strange thing to say, but there’s something unique about that special alchemy that comes from the same group of people creating something for years on end. And when that chemistry gets shaken up, the resulting concoction can be a bit diluted.

One of my favorite bands as a kid was Kiss. And they’ve had plenty of line-up changes. But those original four are the starting and ending of Kiss for me. Gene, Paul, Peter, and, obviously, Ace. I know they put out more albums without Ace and Peter than with them, but to me, that’s Kiss. Everyone else is just acting. Playing a part. Literally. Especially if they get hired to put on someone else’s makeup. 

Now, I’m not saying that good can't come out of the new combinations. But they should be their own, entirely new entity. Don’t try to recreate the original thing. Just let something new grow out of whatever disfunction called for the change in the first place. And call it something else. Look at Metallica. Or Slayer. Van Halen. These bands continued making some arguably great music after major line-up changes, but I think a rebranding was in order. If only to weed the Van Hagar out of a Van Halen streaming station.

Making music in a band is a fragile, and often time-bound, thing. As fans, we want to keep the bands we love in suspended animation, continuing to make the music we love over and over. But we’ll never grow that way. And neither will they. We should allow them to grow. To make new concoctions. We should encourage it, even. But when it happens, I want it rebranded. Because it’s not the same. 

There’s obviously a huge flaw in my logic, I know. Foo Fighters of 1999 were not the same as Foo Fighters of 1995. Those first recordings, as I’m sure you know, were essentially a Dave Grohl solo project. He had to build a band around those ideas just to be able to play them live. And that process takes time and fits and starts. After 20 years recombining the same elements in different ratios, though, you tend to understand what that Foo label is going to give you. A new drummer is definitely going to change that, whether it’s Josh Freese or Jon Theodore or even Hawkins doppelgänger Rufus Taylor. And it may be great. But it should be called something different. Either way, I’ll be at the front of the line to buy it.

See you tomorrow?

27 December 2022

I started listening to a new book today, John Cleese’s Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. It’s pretty short, and I’m almost half-way through, but — fittingly, I guess — it’s already sparked an idea for tonight’s post. It’s a little self-referential, but I want to talk about my creative process a little bit. Especially because coming up with topics for these night after night has required more than a little imagination.

There are a few ways I try to stay inspired. One of them is an idea I just heard in the Cleese book that I’ve also mentioned here before, but I’ll share it again: constraints. I start drafting these a few hours before midnight, knowing that I want to have everything published, a title, an image, a little blurb on Post., and the post itself, before the clock strikes twelve. Those constraints do a couple of things for me. First, it forces me to focus on a single thought which I can elaborate on and, hopefully, not get too distracted from. Second, it provides a deadline so I don’t end up endlessly editing these instead of actually publishing them. Lastly, that urgency is also a motivating factor for me to get out of my own way. The pressure created by setting both a time and a place for these means that I don’t have too much time to second-guess the direction I’m heading in, while still being able to try and land the plane.

There was a Matthew Barney exhibit at the SFMOMA shortly after we moved to San Francisco where he was creating works by physically binding himself in some way. A part of it was a drawing on one of the walls of the center stairway which he created by harnessing himself from the ceiling and only making marks as he swung close enough to make contact with the section of wall he was drawing on. That piece has stayed with me for a number of reasons, not least of which is that no matter what the original vision was, the marks are the marks, and you can’t really change them once they’re committed. That’s something I’m trying to get better at accepting here. And another reason I want to keep doing these. 

I’ve always had a hard time with the idea that done is better than perfect. But having these constraints every evening forces me to do the best I can, and then let it out into the world. Could these be better? In my opinion, yes. But if I held them until I thought they were really perfected and ready for public consumption, honestly, there’d probably be very, very few of these for you to read. (It’s up to you to decide whether that’s a positive or negative, though.) Thankfully, as Biz Stone is fond of saying, creativity is a renewable resource.

See you tomorrow?