I slept till 10am yesterday, for the first time in weeks. Rufus’s coos and smiles (which just started this month) are serious confidence boosters, and help us get through the fussier hours. I gave my editor and agent an update on the new manuscript (125 pages and counting of what’s effectively one long brainstorming session), and the week before I read at Brain Candy, a monthly event at Green Brain Comics that brings together a musician, poet, prose writer, and visual artist. Super relaxed, and to start a reading off with live music – what a treat! House-project-wise I finally put in a linen closet shelf I’d been meaning to put in for months, and I cut and routed a set of drawer dividers for the nursery dresser. When I sit down to write these I never think I have a lot to report, but then I go review my week and … it’s almost too much? Almost.
My first major update to Bebop hit the App Store, with widget, shortcuts, iOS 18 enhancements, plus a Pin Note feature that (somewhat cleverly, if I can toot my own horn) prevents your phone from going to autosleep. This morning I pinned a favorite pancake recipe (some of you already know exactly where this link points) and am happy to report that I did not get flour all over my phone.
I realized that my last letter on my postpartum favorites didn’t mention any apps! Let me correct this with two:
Card Buddy. I’ve been working downstairs instead of in my usual study (whose entryway is separated from the bedroom, where the baby sleeps, by only a door curtain). There’s much less desk space so I tried out Card Buddy and found it to the closest on-screen experience to physical index cards. The keyboard shortcuts are almost familiar – my fingers aren’t sure if they should use spreadsheet shortcuts or Adobe app shortcuts – but grokkable, even if there’s some slight neural rewiring involved.
The new Reeder. I’ve been pretty fickle with RSS in recent years, but this sixth(?) iteration has gotten me excited again. It removes all unread counts, which honestly is a stroke of insight. With past RSS readers I’d get so behind that I found myself skimming just to clear the counts back to zero, or constantly having to mark all as read. Now I just treat the combined feed more like a social media stream: Dip in and out, no sweat if I miss a few days.
Speaking of social streams: I feel like I’m reaching a critical mass of active people I follow on Mastodon. And that my updates don’t end up in front of random strangers unless hand-boosted by a follower makes me more comfortable posting there than on other networks. Is there a name for this algorithmic anxiety? Discophobia?
I’m at https://indieweb.social/@jackcheng, btw.
Meredith Talusan on Publication as the shadow of Writing:
I read a chess article recently that calls one’s chess rating one’s “shadow,” and makes the point that there’s no reason to be worried about your rating because your rating is just an external marker of your ability; if you focus on getting better then your rating will naturally follow. It occurs to me that for writers, the equivalent of “rating” is “publication.”
I probably agree with this 92%. You get a far lower sample rate with publication, so luck plays much more of a role. Though, I guess it means you should do what you can to up that rate!
While we’re on the subject: Here’s George Saunders’s answer to the question, How do you know when a story is done?
Kyle Chayka inNew York Magazine on noise cancellation as a tragedy of the commons (archive link):
[W]hen our individual audio realities become entirely avoidable, our public auditory landscapes get worse […] If you can simply don your puffy AirPods Max and block out road construction outside or the loud stereo blaring from next door, there’s less impetus to address the underlying issues of urban noise pollution or neighborly accountability.
This applies even within my own home, I just realized. It’s part of the reason I’ve not gotten around to putting a door on the study.
The Luddite Club Documentary has a week left to meet their Kickstarter funding goal. You might remember a NY Times profile on this group of Brooklyn teens who carry flip phones and tote around bags full of paper books. (via Jenny Odell, whose books are a Dumpling Club favorite)
Speaking of shunting technology: Dark Properties interviews Cortney Cassidy on leaving tech to become a full-time gardener at the High Line. I especially loved this articulation by Cassidy not leaving her tech job right away:
[A]nytime you start something new, it’s going to take time to get to a point where you feel secure in it. I wanted to have the safety net of my previous job to carry me through to that point. I like to think of that first summer as a bridge.
I’d also been at the computer job for so long that I did my work on autopilot. And, in my experience, a computer job is mostly meetings and emails. When I was put on a more complex project towards the end of doing both jobs, it started to get harder to balance. That’s when I realized the computer work was holding me back from realizing my full potential as a gardener. I had reached the other side of the bridge.
Certainly the case with my own careers.
That’s two Sunday letters in two weeks! You’d almost think things were normal around here. To end, here’s a photo of yours truly holding that five-pound lo-caf coffee baby.
And remember: Some bridges are built from both sides at once.