Process Note 1

notes on love, skies, and aspirations

Sorry if you got two emails, I’m still figuring out Substack sections.

Notes On Love

Maintenance

Most of my projects don’t require much if any upkeep unless a dependency breaks or something, but Notes on Love is a special case that I must keep coming back to, and something that I committed to doing when I created it. I manually moderate all of the responses, because at the end of the day it’s still a project that exists on the internet and honestly I’m pleasantly surprised by the low spam rates so far. It’s been quite a few months since I’ve last looked at the responses and I finally sat down to read through them. There were over 1500 entries, where I alternated between intense attention, a gliding skim for the sake of speed, and a gliding skim trying to not parse the entry too much to leave some room for myself to experience them for the first time on the site. It amazes me that behind each of these spreadsheet cells is a human! with so much heart. These entries are heartbreaking and humorous, heartwarming and tragic. So, so many expressions of love. Lots of hey’s, hi’s, I love you’s and I’m sorry’s, declarations and promises to love always, regrets for not living up to those, missing of a loved one, intimate confessions that haven’t been said, can’t be said, or said too late. Daily wishes for joy. Updates from where people are. Sometimes a line, sometimes paragraphs, in many different languages. I sometimes forget how beautiful of a space the internet can be, and how connection doesn’t have to happen synchronously. My favorite ones are those that are addressed to a person or signed by name, in hopes that someday they will be recognized for what they are or maybe to just loudly stamp their soul into their message. I found myself crying at all the tender stages of the heart that were so willingly shared, reading some of the confessions and wanting to desperately shake the shoulder behind the screen and gently yell at them “tell them you fool!! tell them you love them before it’s too late!”

Some favorites:

i'm currently at work, writing this in front of him. it's 7 pm. he's still working on his project, have zero idea that i'm confessing my feelings for him here. i have this big, fat, incurable crush towards him. it's just so easy with him. that i never try to be anyone else, that for the first time in my life, i feel seen. someone actually sees me.

we're not lovers, yet. i hope later when i found this again we already are.

I hope that when you have a plant in your care, it thrives.

the world can feel like a dark place somethimes, a lot of times, but there in the end there is more nice, fun good stuff. Overal people mean well. Do sports at least 2 times a week and enjoy the moment. Fuck social media and all that bullshit and just enjoy the FUCKING MOMENT!!!

thank you :)

Something about “do sports at least 2 times a week” made me burst into tears. It’s terribly specific and necessary, and took a stranger on the internet to remind me to take care of myself in this specific way.

WIP

Creation for myself, others, or in the name of research?

scanning these took kind of long

For the past year, I’ve been painting a little square of the sky each day to get over the winter depression and it worked. Now I have two sketchbooks full of sky, 192 skies to be exact -- now what to do with them?? I don’t think I want to put them online - it only feels right that what was created on paper stay on paper. I want to maintain the texture of the watercolor paper. Maybe a ziNE? The first step will be to scan each page regardless. What would you like to see? Could I possibly have just done something for myself? Even when I first started this project last November I knew that it was going to be shared someday.

For many projects now, a feeling I find weird is that at all stages I can imagine the futures eyes on them. Ew. Everything has to be FOR something. I want the feeling of creating with abandon, and holding a low barrier to creation. More surface area and all that, but I do get pulled back to doing vs documentation. I think that’s what pottery was for me last year, a hobby to make wobbly pieces that bring me joy but this year I decided to get gud. Now I’m grinding throwing cups on the wheel for some reason that I find myself wanting to justify. The “wanting to get better technically so I can make more cool stuff” isn’t really it since pottery is not really where I’m trying to go into the avant-garde. My current best contender is “I like knowing that I can be a beginner at something and get better, and my brain goes head empty no thoughts while I throw.”

The space where I can without a doubt consistently find an unwatched space for creation is with gifts for others. There will only be one pair of eyes that it will ever be for, and the message it aims to send is that I love you.

I’ve been working on a curriculum for teaching computational text generation as a way of understanding what roles AI can play in writing -- if anyone has suggestions on resources I’d very much appreciate it. I can’t imagine actually teaching this though, so something isn’t quite right there yet. It’s a loose combination of ideas and tutorials on technologies, and maybe the way to go is to just guinea pig it with a few friends.

I’m thinking about the processes that writers go through -- I’ve never looked inward at my own creative processes much, and haven’t been one to read biographies of big names to learn about theirs but now I think that might be the way? You only ever know your own process otherwise. I wonder if my world will expand by being soaked in someone else’s. Will there be biographies about artists who use AI and go extensively into their processes? Will it carry the same fascination? Unhingedness? What would you want to know? What would you like to share? What are your favorite process notes? I’m ready to be a first grade snoop. Doing vs documentation.

Consumed

I think I am entering a holiday goblin grind period for work now. I say I’m a writer but after interviewing writers it feels odd to call myself one, not as self-defeat, but in the way of I see how these writers live and breathe writing and I am not like that, yet, but I wish to be there. I have seen what it looks like and I think it can be developed in myself. I like this idea that you can aspire to a place where you can see value, even if you can’t quite say what it is because you’re not there. I’m convinced to read the book.

I also feel this from How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, except she has clearly articulated the value on the other side. There’s a different way of living here, one that I can’t quite explain fully because I am not yet there, but I’ve heard enough to know that I want to head in that direction.

Secret Projects

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