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Then when I went to text my father a Happy Birthday and I noticed I’ve barely spoken to anyone in the past couple of weeks. That was when it sunk in that I was dealing with a little depression. I was isolating myself, which is common for me when I’ve had bouts of this.

I’ve been exploring the inner recesses of my mind lately, so I guess I’m not too surprised. I’ve been stirring up stuff and also dealing with some uncomfortable thoughts in my own life right such as being frustrated with my job, feeling like I do not have a purpose, and loneliness. I also have a pretty bad case of negative self-talk going on these days, which is somewhat unusual for me.

So, what am I doing about these things? Well…

1. I enrolled in an online class at my local community college for Sterile Processing. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a few years, and I thought it might be a short class where I can get certified and that could lead to some jobs in the future.

2. I’ve been applying regularly to jobs. I’ve reached out to a few contacts, so hopefully something new will come up soon.

3. I’ve made peace with needing to leave my current job. I know my job will counter if I put in my notice (they have in the past) and I know I could possibly improve my situation here, but it’s not going to fix the core problems that have been making me irritated since I started this job a few years ago. I’ve told myself I won’t hear any counter arguments this time around.

4. I bought some new clothes. I decided that I needed to replace some old clothes and maybe upgrade my wardrobe a bit. So, I bought a couple of shirts that aren’t exactly my style (t-shirt and jeans), and they look good. There’s a certain level of confidence that comes from dressing nice and I need to get that back.

5. I’ve been journaling by hand. I’m a big fan of Diarium, but there is something about journaling by hand that is liberating. I’m a fan of having to slow down my thoughts to meet the speed of my hand and just the idea of creating something that isn’t on a computer is great.

6. I’ve been playing with my cat. My cat loves me, and it drives my wife nuts. She follows me around, sits on me all the time, and my poor wife just begs for five minutes of kitten cuddles, but never gets it. She is now demanding we get another cat so she can have one.

7. I’ve considered going to church. I’ve toyed with this idea for years now. I haven’t been a believer in decades, but I miss the ritual and think it would be a great place to find community. The biggest problem with this is politics. The traditional churches are too conservative, and the progressive churches are too liberal. It’d be so nice to find a church that didn’t prop itself up on politics, but I don’t think that type of church exists.

So, yeah, I don’t really have any solutions other than just getting up each day and trying a few new things and waiting this little depressive episode out. I am going to try to get back to blogging this week and I’m going to catch up my emails and maybe I’ll feel just a little bit better.

In other words: its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.

Nesting in Sass CSS is similar: nesting selectors aids readability, but do it too much and now nothing is readable. Again, a double-edged sword.

The things you extol about a technology are also going to be the things that get you into trouble because those are the trade-offs.

So to evaluate a piece of tech, you should ask yourself: what are the downsides of the the very things I love about this?

The folks at Linear articulated this perfectly in a post-mortem explaining why they were having issues related to speed. To quote their post:

These [speed] problems stem from trade-offs in our architecture. The reason Linear is fast is also the reason Linear is slow once workspaces grow in size.

The reason it’s fast (in certain scenarios) is also the reason it’s slow (in other scenarios).

The reason it’s great sometimes is also the reason it sucks sometimes.

Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.

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The first half of the ride was mostly uphill (since it’s a low mountain range) and somewhat demotivating as I was slower than I wanted to be. City traffic, suboptimal bike infrastructure, and traffic lights added to the delays. However, after a quick stop at a castle to take a picture, the second half of the ride, which was mostly downhill and with better infrastructure, was much more enjoyable.

This trip taught me that hard times are often followed by rewarding experiences. It can’t always be easy.

Or can it be? Maybe I should take my bike with me the next time I go to my second flat for more than just three days, as the area there has far fewer hills and mountains.

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I am a morning person. I know it. I experimented with it and I know for a fact that I'm happier, more productive and live a better life when I wake up early. Not once, when up early, I thought "Why am I already awake? Shouldn't I be sleeping?". That's just not a thought I have because I know how much more I enjoy life when I'm up early. But late at night? That's a constant thought. I'm sitting there, reading something online and I constantly think "Why am I here reading this? I should be sleeping". And in doing that, in staying up late, the mismatch gathers strength. It's a vicious cycle.

That's one example but I'm realising that this is the source of all my struggles. And it's not much the fact that I am not the person I'd love to be—or that I think I am—but the fact that I don't do the things that I should be doing in order to become that person. And it fucking sucks. It sucks because I know that's going to be incredibly hard to correct that but at the same time I'm glad that at least now I know where the problem is and I can work towards a solution.

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Four Tet’s Three is one of my favorite albums of the year, so I was delighted to come across an interview with Kieran Hebden on the Tape Notes podcast discussing its making. He rarely gives interviews, so before listening, I really knew nothing about him or how he works. It was a delight to hear about the making of a record I’ve spent so much time with. 

Four Tet’s music is extra special to me because my 11-year-old composer and I both love it — I put “Loved” on my February mixtape and Owen put “Lush” on the mixtape we collaborated on this month. It was wild to me to hear Hebden describe how he works in Ableton, drawing the notes on the piano roll instead of playing them on the keyboard. (Something I see Owen do a ton when he’s composing.)

I really loved Hebden’s attitude towards making music after many decades. He says that if he can stay excited about listening to music and enjoy the making of it while also avoiding the trappings of success and the bog of the industry, that it actually makes the work more successful. Just a wonderful listen. 

When he was asked about his most important piece of equipment, he said his hi-fi system because it’s what helps him listen to music in a level of detail that helps him really explore and hear sounds. (Check out the gigantic ongoing Spotify playlist of what he’s listening to.)

This emphasis on listening came up over and over again in the interview, and I wanted to copy down his advice to other musicians: Listen to more music.

“Listening to a lot of music and really exploring it and doing that level of investigation of really understanding where things have come from.”

He then describes swimming upstream: 

If you listen to a current record now that samples an old nineties record, and then you check out the old nineties record, find out that sample’s like an old soul record for the drum break or whatever.

And then you go listen to the old soul record and then you find out who the drummer was who played that drum break. And it’s like, oh, it’s Bernard Purdy or whatever.

And then you look on Wikipedia and check out all the other records he made. And then you’re like, oh, he worked with this producer a lot and you check out what that producer did.

To listen to music in that way and explore it and study it, I think is hugely valuable in terms of learning how to be a good arranger, a good producer, a good musician. The more you take in of understanding the sort of like great music that’s out there and the things that came before, it’s so powerful.

Everything’s there, all the information’s there. And then if you take everything you learn from that and then combine it with your own ideas and your own emotions and stuff, then you sort of set up to sort of push things forward. I think that’s much more useful than spending all your time being like, I’m just gonna be learning what every single thing in Ableton does now for the next few months…

You’ve got to love records so much, he says, that you want to make something that can sit on a shelf alongside the records you love.

It’s a lesson that is true for all creative people: Your output depends on your input.

If you want to be a great musician, you need to listen to more great music. If you want to write great books, you need to read more great books. If you want to make great films…

(Steal like an artist.)

People who aren't from huge cities like New York don't know that Trump what our losers look like. They probably have their own loser types. I think that's where 99% of the confusion is. They really don't believe he's so bad. Don't hold that against them, that's nowhere near as bad as knowing what he is and being okay with that.

He's a mean bully type. The name-calling is a big clue. Distracts from his weaknesses, which are very obvious. I don't believe in body shaming, because I care about other people's feelings. If I criticize his appearance it might reflect poorly on nice people who have his body type who may not be mean bully losers like Trump.

He's also a really good comedian if you don't think he wants to have the power to kill millions of people and control many more people. Last time he was our president just through incompetence, without trying, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the Covid disaster. He also wanted the army shoot protestors, that's the mean part of our former president. Luckily the people who worked for him told him to fuck off. They saved us from going into a very deep hole that would have been hard to escape from.

I watched the coverage of the aftermath of the assassination attempt, and listened to the Americans they interviewed, not the actors they put behind him on stage, to make him look like a badass I guess, these were just normal people who mostly like Trump, but seem pretty likeable themselves. The one thing you heard over and over was how If you don't like a candidate vote against them don't shoot them. That's American and it's not fascist at all. I don't think they know that he wants to make big changes in how our politics work. People think if he's bad they can just vote him out next time. He tells them this will be the last election if he wins, he actually says that, but somehow it doesn't seem to register.

Of course the journalists are distorting who Trump supporters are. Trump is deplorable if you take him at his word. Some of Trump's followers are deplorable too, like the ones who rioted at our Capitol and January 6 and the people who are lined up to work in his next administration if he wins. They are awful people who want to control all of us. They're already doing it via the Supreme Court. It's going to get a lot worse if we go the wrong way. We shouldn't accept that we're horribly divided. The powerful media people want us to be divided, I don't know why and I don't care, I just know they do, based on their actions.

Anyway I know we're at a high moment, we're excited, and I'm going to enjoy the feeling. We all seem to be pulling the same way, at least on "our side" but I hold out hope that being an American still means something, that we can be friends, and fellow countrymen, and work together. I think that's still our greatest challange and our greatest opportunity. Yeah I am woke, that means I care about all of us. I think most of us do no matter who you vote for.

Well now who can't resist that? Me, that's who.

I installed SilverBullet via OrbStack, which is also new to me, and is delicious.

First impressions are (it's only been a few hours) that I think he's onto something. I can't explain it, but SilverBullet immediately felt more right to me than Obsidian. I am running it locally on my Mac Mini and accessing it from everywhere else using Tailscale.

I certainly don't need another way to take notes, but I'm going to continue giving SilverBullet a spin and see if it leads anywhere.

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