Journal Excerpt
…wandering forward, sometimes only by inches. But I am moving. And so is everything else. I will never truly get to pause everything and have a proper look around to get my bearings. But I can keep dropping pages like breadcrumbs as I go, and following the marks on the trunks of trees left before me, and keep chasing the sunlight I see streaming through the trees ahead.
And that will be enough.
From a journal entry dated 10 April 2024
CCB 006 - The Ever-Mutating Life of Tumblr Dot Com
Okay funny story - I wrote the below little post over a year ago, and for some reason, never published it. Instead it was hiding in drafts nearly lost to history and my memory.
Spoiler Alert: I did end up rejoining Tumblr, but then got back off of it around the change of the year as part of a general rejiggering of my internet/media/art-experiencing habits and routines. I do miss some aspects of Tumblr (again) but not enough to got back…
Anyway, original year-old post follows:
As a service, Tumblr’s lack of commerciality and consistent inability to successfully monetize itself is part of its whole appeal. There’s a whole genre of Tumblr posts that just screenshot and mock the bizarre hosted ads that spawn on the dashboard like mutated fish in a radioactively-poisoned river.
But it’s a loving kind of mockery—users seem, for the most part, to be genuinely grateful for the state of the site. For many, it’s a refuge from the dystopian insanity that the rest of the internet has come to represent. “It’s like anti-social social media,” says Bec, regarding Tumblr’s continued paradoxical appeal.
[…] for those who value creativity without the pressures of “hustle culture,” and wish to avoid the current-events performative outrage that has crept in, kudzu-like, and swallowed up almost every single other area of open expression online, Tumblr remains ideal.
The corollary of that, of course, being that those who appreciate that creativity without necessarily needing or wanting to express it themselves can also find happy homes on Tumblr, as spectators to a healthy culture of simply liking things.
Source: The Ever Mutating Life of Tumblr dot com
Tumblr was absolutely my social media “home” for a long time - though I never saw it has a social media platform, per se. It was communal blogging and celebration of cool shit. It was the only platform I ever amassed any sort of following on, and the only one I ever saw my self wanting a following on.
I deleted my account and my tumblogs (hell yes, that is what I did and will aways call them) when the porn ban came down - mainly because the site/admins/corporate overlords were handling it, oh so badly. But it sounds like a lot of that has calmed down now…
And now, I’m nostalgic for it? I am feeling… things? This will not do, not at all.
I’m not considering getting back on Tumblr? …am I?
Oh no.
I am afraid to put dates on entries.
I am intimidated. I feel pressured by them.
I understand and agree with their usefulness in the world of ‘blog as archive’, but among the other parallel worlds of what a blog can be, I kind of like the ambiguity of posting without them. Does it really matter that you know exactly what day I said this? Or, how close this is, temporally, to the previous post? To the (hopefully) next one?
I mean, it might matter! I don’t actually know! I’m asking you!
Undecided. Is there a date on this post? Depending on when you are looking at it, there might be. Or there might not. I’m not sure if there is a third option.
“The only one among us not free to change their mind is the one who does not decide…”
CCB 005 - Eternal Return
[Nietzsche] accepts the inevitability and suffering of reality (eternal return) but insists that the person, the self, must change perception. This change of perception must address only oneself, for no other expectation or altered circumstance but only sheer will, insight, and perception, can give us a new ability to understand, tolerate, and transcend suffering. The present moment of existence must become the tablet on which to etch one’s aspirations, intentions, conclusions, directions, not change any external circumstances but to see through everything, to live in its contradictions. [Emphasis mine.]
Eternal return is purgation of past weaknesses, failure, error, desire. The self must embrace not only the will to pursue a new self but what would be associated with Nietzsche as the will to power, meaning no more than the taking control of one’s self in life and destiny. Because this self-made destiny is the fruit of a personal struggle, the self must overcome much that is irrevocably external affecting the inner person. The will must transform the self not through attack but through transvaluation, the will overcoming obstacles, subjectivities, falsehoods, not reliant on society, culture, others, but forging one’s own path and system of thought and values.
From: Eternal Return via Hermit’s Thatch
Once again I’ve been thinking about eternal return (heh).
Once again I find myself circling, hovering around the periphery of action.
Once again I find myself going through all of the motions and preparations leading up to an actual change. I make the run up closer than I ever have.
Yet still the gulf remains. The gap. The canyon between me and It.
I have been at this point so many times before.
I just need a better approach, I say. So I retreat back. I plan the route. I clear the path. I wait for favorable weather. The wheel turns again; I set off running. It’s easier this time, I am gaining speed. I see the Other Side. I see where I can land. I just need to jump, and…
And I skid to a stop, right at the edge. Again.
It is easy to get lost in that. Here I am making the same old mistakes. Here I am again, not doing the thing I claim I want to do.
The gravity of my goal, my task, has no doubt captured me. But I can’t come into land. I simply spiral tighter and tighter around it. And sometimes I drift away and maybe that’s what I need - to let it go and float off somewhere else - but no, at the farthest reaches, the arch of orbit tugs at my back, my retreat slows, and my path bends and I am on the approach again.
How many times will I do this?
But to think that this isn’t yet another repeat of every other failed attempt… to realize that I am not being cursed with another frustrating iteration, but blessed with another chance to get it right…
…that despite how many times I have found myself here, the only thing that exists is this present moment…
“…the person, the self, must change perception.”
CCB 004 - Who Are We, Really?
Sometimes, alone, I feel like a ghost. Unmasked, I walk through the world as if I’m embodying impressions. I channel the wind, the sadness the rain brings, the spring gloom. My identity is composed of memories, of spirits of places, of things I tell myself, and of things others tell me. I know it’s all in flux. The masks are shifting.
…this reminds me of:
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, These you presented to me you fish-shaped island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d with that electric self seeking types.
💬 from Walt Whitman’s “As I Ebb’d With The Ocean of Life”
In times of crisis, we set out to find ourselves. Perhaps we will find whatever it is that constitutes us out there in the Himalayas, or somewhere out west. Perhaps we’ll find ourselves in another person who teaches us to see, or in the sun that sets over the Pacific ocean. Often we’ll gain access to another part of ourselves through a story that inspires us.
But this quest to “find yourself” is somewhat self-defeating when the more precise goal ought to be “to create yourself,”
Discovery: Searching for a fixed point; you can miss it, never find it
Creation: Always happening, and especially when you realize it, and do with intention. Never has to end. Is complete when you say so…
In Hinduism, the ego is a trapping of the physical world. The body is often likened to a flesh tomb, and the ego is like the glass that contains our true self and shapes it. The true self—the atman —is a silent, conscious witness. It exists within every creature at its core.
I really enjoyed this piece, and find myself returning to it. I’ve read it two or three times already, and though it doesn’t necessarily contain any revolutionary, knock-me-off-my-chair epiphanies, it does that amazing and crucial task of giving form and structure to the kind of wordless questions and wonderings I often have, and allows me to re-engage with them, chew on them in more tangible forms than when they are swimming in my head…
Source: Who Are We Really?
Doldrums Defied: A January Recap
CCB 003
from: Year End: On moving to the woods
Something I’m coming to know in my bones is this: I’ve come back to what matters over and over again, even when the timescale exceeds my limited perspective. I have every reason to have faith in myself.
Lucy Bellwood in Winter Bottleship, 2022/2023
[…] realising, properly, for the first time, that one day in the future I would no longer be here on earth, existing as the small but very definite and palpable thing I had become.
Tom Cox in Old Photos
The Origin of the arch-book
What began as an impulsive project on a Friday afternoon turned into a 4 - 5 day extravaganza.
The arch-book is actually a Dell Chromebook 11 from a few years ago. It is old enough that the newer ChromeOS updates didn’t run great on it, but it is otherwise a good machine with a nice, simple, utilitarian form factor. I really like it, and always lamented never using it to its fullest potential. A few years ago, I messed around with putting GalliumOS on it. That was fine but a) I never worked on it long enough to get all of the kinks out, and 2) I never really decided how I would use it once it was set up. I never integrated it into my daily practice and habits. And that was fine, I suppose; it was a hobby project. But I still felt like I was wasting a cool piece of tech.
Then last week with no warning, I decided to dust off this machine to see if I can make it a usable part of my day-to-day practice.
CCB 002 - "I feel very strong to do it."
Quotes from Steinbeck’s journals:
never temper a word to a reader’s prejudice, but bend it like putty for his understanding.
…and:
I have tried to keep diaries before but they don’t work out because of the necessity to be honest.
💬 Source: How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work via The Marginalian
CCB 001
When you deeply love someone, you can look at them and see the difference between their true nature and a behaviour that’s an expression of suffering.
💬 Source: ‘The Limited Story of Yourself is Actually Quite Fictional’: An Interview with William Brewer by Julie Mannell on HazLitt
CCB 000 - about
I go through the RSS feeds and newsletters, and compose a morningcomputer post here to condense what I’ve learned that morning that I consider worth retaining and processing. So some days there isn’t one.
source: Warren Ellis in Morning Routine And Work Day
Dang. That’s a great idea. Okay, count me in.
ETA (24 June 2025): …but it won’t always be in the morning… and it won’t always be about things I read on the computer. Hmm. And so, the Cyber Commonplace Book tag aka CCB is born!
In my last post here, I was so worried about the precedent numbered entries in a series would set, I didn’t define the scope of the series itself well enough. Or if I did, I don’t remember.
Isn’t everything I write here a “process log”? This is a web log after all (since I am, for some reason, so set on using that particular antiquated phrase…)
So here I am! Making progress on my process and uh… logging it!
I’ve updated Homo Monstrosus, in both style and content. And the site has been on my mind more and more - as a tool, a project, a hobby, but also as a shelter, a record, a showcase. Creating and building in general has been on my mind more too, but the front, active part of it, rather than the back(burner), “sigh, one day…” part. I am almost building a creative practice. Or rather, I am building a creative practice, it’s just wobbly like a baby deer. Spooks easily like one too.
I am still iterating over exactly how I want to exist on the web. Still trying to crystalize and differentiate the ways one can publish web content. I’m not talking on a global, capitalism scale, or about being a Content Creator on a social media website or anything like that. I’m talking about one person, making (mostly) words and publishing them using the networked tools they have access to.
I’m thinking about the difference between pages that are designed to be dynamic and updated, versus static and time-locked. The blogging revolution brought web publishing to the masses, but it also came with this subconscious implication that the only valid content on the web was the newest, most current, whatever was at the top of the blog. And with that came the idea that “old” content was somehow less-than. Or that unchanging content, whether by design or as an artifact didn’t have a place on the web. Couldn’t be trusted. Or maybe those are just implications I wrestled with.
What do I want to make? Why? Who is it for? When is it for?
These are much more potent and healthy questions than the ones I’d traditionally ask like, Can I even make anything? Who do I think I am? Why haven’t I done more? Should I just stop kidding myself?
There’s other stuff on my mind. World stuff, obviously. But World-level internet stuff too. It seems very popular these last few months to acknowledge that the web and capitalism appear to be inexorably linked, and that the coupling is killing us, leading us and the planet herself to doom. And that’s not wrong, of course, but the situation was incredibly apparent well before Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter (though that event, at least to me, seems to have kicked off the lastest wave of these kind of think pieces… and again, that’s not an inappropriate response.)
But as much as I generally agree with the sentiment - that’s not where I want to live right now. The internet hasn’t been what I’ve wanted it to be in a long time, well before I realized it. I can’t dismantle those systems.
I can chip away at my little site. Plod around this blog. Build my little chicken coop as the cathedrals fall to the shelling.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
Project Log 001
Considering
Well, I’m 39 now. Have been for almost 30 hours. So far, so good (all things considered).
And boy oh boy, do I consider ALL the things.
In fact, it feels like I’ve done nothing for the last 2+ years but consider all the things. In my defense, there’s been a lot to consider. But, as is my custom, I’ve become fed up with considering and need to do… something. And this is about the place that I never get past. The precipice of Something. It’s always the same. Some arbitrary ‘new beginning’. Seizing the supposed energy that comes with a new week, a new month, a new pen, a new notebook, a new year. Because, ‘this time’ it will be different. However by ‘this time’ + two weeks it will be basically the same as it ever was.
Even this, the wry but frustrated observation of past cycles, the ‘first post in months’ that is destined to be come ‘the last update in weeks’, the soft ‘but maybe…’ whispering in the back of my head. The sad sigh that follows. I’ve done it all before.
And so, I am embarrassed. So often have I tried to jump start something that isn’t a car engine. So often have I postured, trying on the costume of the person I want to become, standing in front of the mirror going, “wouldn’t it just be wild if I just wore this?”
Wouldn’t it?
“This time will be different.”
Well, things are certainly… different. Pandemic. War. And the careening, bucking, lurching, drunken networked, polarized society we live in just throwing itself against the walls of its cage. I can honestly say that life at 39 is different than I expected. I don’t know that I ever actually sat down and considered what it would be like to be 39. But I do know I wouldn’t have ever considered it would be… like this.
So I guess that means it can be anything, that I can be anything.
It means I don’t actually have to come out here and pay my dues by bleeding all over the blogpost, by being just self-deprecating enough, by noting for the record how stupid or privileged or pointless this whole endeavor is, by winkingly insulting myself to wrestle the privilege away from anyone else.
It means that I can just… do what I want. Type what I want. Take pictures of what I want. Post what I want, build what I want. Perhaps more importantly, it means I don’t have to do… any of it. I can just be.
I am sick of death. Lately that is the dense, gaping black hole that lives in the back of my head and perpetually and eventually tugs at all of my thoughts. I can’t lose any more down that drain. I need to do… anything else.
And so, I am.