now

tue, dec 31, 2024

on the web

I’m setting up this blog, er, digital garden?

I haven’t had much presence on the internet in the last 3 or 4 years, and I have never had a public one. I’m interested in seeing what comes from publishing my thoughts online. To that end, I’ve created a bluesky account to pair with this personal site. I’m hoping to get some golden-era Twitter-level content, but so far it’s been various WIPs from designers.

I’m cool with that.

tech stuff

It took a few days to get this site online. I’ve been tinkering with astro and tailwind for the first time, and migrating from namecheap to cloudflare pages, learning a lot along the way.

After all is said and done, I quite like the framework for this content-driven site. The content for every page except for one is written entirely in markdown. With the initial configuration out of the way, it should be smooth sailing ™️.

notes and more notes

I have been fascinated by the idea of digital gardens and evergreen notes, which is largely what this site will replicate: a repository of trivia I find interesting, misplaced ramblings, questions I’m exploring, dots I’m connecting.

I’ve been taking evergreen notes for around a year or so, some of which have incidentally taken the shape of a few blog posts, so I may upload them shortly.

oh look matt is reading again how novel

I’ve been doing a lot of reading. This isn’t news. It’s hard to say how I source my articles since I have been building up a curated list over the years. However, now and then I’ve been picking a handful of posts from these sources:

This blog stood out to me recently. I love the creativity, passion, and curiosity. The author is building a kind of community I’d love to have in Tokyo.

Similarly, at some point I realized I had huge confidence issues this year. The culmination of lots of reflection and reading Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway at the right point in my life led to an epiphany or five. This year I’ve read one too many of these self-help books, so much so that I’m exhausted by the genre and will probably put it on pause for a good while.

The books I’m currently reading can be found on Oku. I have started and paused a dozen books, but try to keep the reading collection up-to-date with what I’m actually currently engaged with.

My next read will probably be Do the Work by Steven Pressfield or The Creative Act by Rick Rubin because I’m in the mood to read about creativity. I also came across Self Renewal by John Gardner which is relevant given it focuses on resilience (albeit on the societal level as well).

Lastly, an article that stuck with me is this one on being homeless in the US.

monthly challenges

I want to do something like a monthly challenge for various interests and document them here. Some ideas: re-implement a beautiful web design every day, speak 60m of Japanese every day (harder than you’d think in Tokyo!), make one character drawing a day, give a presentation on something I know nothing about given only X days to prepare, etc. I find it appealing because it forces me into action and encourages me to try either new things or things I was too shy or uncomfortable to do without sufficient motivation.

It doesn’t have to be every day, and there need to be clear rules in place to discourage “cheating”, but that’s the gist.

new stuff

I started an animation course. I’m doodling on my iPad and I am blown away by how enjoyable it is. I don’t think I’ve ever earnestly tried to draw anything in my life, at some point had a fixed mindset that I couldn’t do it, and now I am completely disregarding that self-imposed limitation and having a blast.