Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 15

SitRep, 03mar2021

Good morning; it’s currently 30��F under sunny skies and, according to USPS, my “package will arrive later than expected, but is still on its way. It is currently in transit to the next facility,” having been in this purgatorial state of transit since 21feb.

And so it is and so it goes.

In the process of reorganizing my schedule for the upcoming yardcare season but also thinking in terms of sitting vs moving and trying to stagger those periods of sitting and moving throughout the day. My workblocks are a combo of both now, especially with the standing desk, whose return has been wonderful. Will probably revert to my creative vampirism, the first block of work being before the sun rises and the second in the evenings instead of after lunch: more moving after dinner and a way to leave the days open for random access servitude.

Also nice to literally sleep on the creative problem from the evening block in the hopes that an answer will be there in the morning.

Equal potential that I’ll just do all of my writing in the morning and that these will be a bridge between the two segments.

Shared newsletter direction yesterday; the reminder worked.

I still like writing these; the day awaits.

SitRep, 02mar2021

Now that I’ve finally settled on a title/category, I guess I do like doing these. Especially since I’m using Drafts for all of my Micro/online posting now. Finally found that systemic sweet spot, maybe.

A flurry of ideas continues apace: capture, capture, capture / get that brain to empty. Hopefully these will ebb in the coming days, once I settle into a new routine.

Returned to wearing my Watch ��� hopefully without dialing emergency services: mostly missed its function as a dumb phone, allowing me ��� in the house ��� at least, to receive texts and make calls (not emergency services) and run my timers and that’s about it.

(DumbWatch?)

Coupled with capital-W Watch return, I’m conducting an experiment: going against typical thought and practice, I’ve turned on lock-screen notifications for all social communiques (these are NOT mirrored to my Watch; Watch is the home for calls and texts and timers, a useful boundary). While I may fall flat on my face, the theory I’m testing for myself is that if I have these notifications on the screen (on a device I rarely pick up during the day, especially with the Watch back in action), I won’t be so tempted to lose myself in the slot machine rabbit holes of the apps themselves. In theory, anyhow.

Started Mark Ruffalo’s Golden Globe-winning I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE last night: Ruffalo deserves every award he earns/earned for this performance. Incredible, so far.

Words are appearing; working to figure out a metric for the day’s work blocks. Word counts give me hives, thinking iA Writer-based highlighted tasks: three per block / can only add a new one once those three are taken care of.

Reminding myself to share the newsletter/zine plan later today.

It’s currently 19��F under sunny skies; the day awaits.

SitRep, 01mar2021

No idea if this is something that I want to do again (for the first time, here), but here I am with the time and the feeling of a particular freedom in this Micro space that was, I can see now, lacking at the main site: a little less pressure to make these daily rambles good or possessed of any value beyond the brain-emptying/clearing properties of their creation?

Case in point / this is what is on my mind:

While I don’t necessarily loathe food made in crockpots, I loathe crockpots in general. Suspect that it’s because, in my mind ��� or what passes for it these days ��� crockpots are about the result �����not the process ��� of cooking, and I cannot, in good conscience, allow a perfectly good piece of meat be subjected to its stuff-it-and-forget it whims. But I can’t deny that the house does smell good on crockpot days.

Such is my inner turmoil. And so the day begins.

(Note: while I can’t discount the possibility that my presence in this daily ramble space is part of withdrawal from being done with the weekly newsletter �����NL isn’t going anywhere, just shifting to monthly+ for reasons I’ll share/re-share here later this week ��� I am, in spite of having said I would write these only when I felt like it, fully cognizant of the potential that “when I felt like it” meant “return to daily.” Who knows.)

Project News and Such

Reprinted from Sunday���s MacroParentheticals0040:

While I’m very much in the inchoate stages of thought-noodling and can’t share particulars here (because I don’t have any), it’s exceedingly likely that the birthday novella/novelette release discussed in last week’s Informality won’t be a one-off thing, but a yearly one, my birthday present to myself, a way to view each passing year not as one of stagnation and self-loathing (as I did throughout my 30s) but of incremental progress and a modicum of accomplishment. So, while I’m taking the next six months to shock and awe the current (and myself), the writing of the next will start after the release of the first in August and will be scheduled/timeblocked in with other long-form work for the duration of the year.

More when I know it.

A few more words

While the loss of our best good boy will hurt for some time, we are keeping ��� as we have with each passing of a beloved dog-child �����one thing in mind, a value we consider sacrosanct: the loss also means that, once we have grieved and healed (not before - never before: it’s not fair to the next to be a coping mechanism) and learned to function within the absence, we must ��� and will �����heed our responsibility as dedicated dog parents to give another dog in need the same chance at life and at happiness as we have all of those that have, without fail, captured our hearts time and again.

But for now, healing. Thank you all, again, for your kind words and support. ����

SitRep, 01feb2021

A much-needed week off from The Third Book - being that my brain is begging for some distance - to fiddle with and scribble upon the second episode of re/emergence, my experimental short fiction and music collab with Elizabeth Joan Kelly; first episode arriving 14feb in my newsletter and 17feb everywhere else.

A brief word on my Twitter break...

…(if only for myself): I don’t hate Twitter, I see its value �����I wouldn’t have a career without it, at least as it, Twitter or my career, used to be �����but, given my current projects workload, I don’t have the capacity to keep myself mentally in check if I do partake. Weekly Informality incoming.

Total Assembly Required Interlude

Bag One: in which I commence the assembly of our Christmas gift to my 94-year-old grandfather. Batmobile on hold.

In a happy confluence of interests, he loves both trucks and owning Legos of trucks (and making wooden display stands upon which to display his pre-assembled Legos of trucks) but can’t stand building them; I like to build them but lose all interest once they’re finished.

(He said he ���already has some ideas��� about the form his wooden display stand will take. )

And thus, the build begins.

Input of Note: THE GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE

Note: this is an edited/updated version of Sunday’s “Input of Note” selection from issue 0033 my MacroParentheticals newsletter. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

Continuing from Wednesday: the first film remains my favorite of the saga; the second is a “perfect film” but I still prefer the first; and, though I’d forgotten much of Part III, now CODA, the re-edit �����though only five minutes shorter than the original �����felt different, more assured, and marked a fitting conclusion: the power of a defined existential purpose.

My opinion of PART III still holds in its new guise: Sophia Coppola’s performance is, like the film itself, unfairly maligned (I’m not sure anyone could’ve done much with the part �����a plot device, at best, thankless from the first ink spilled ��� and I suspect that complaints about her are little more than a convenient personification of critical disappointment in the film itself); the mirroring variations and riffs on the themes established in Parts I and II are fascinating and tragic though meaningless unless you’re intimately familar with Parts I and II; and, though the Vatican plot is confusing as hell, it’s not a bad film by any metric (the fifth season of THE WIRE being comparable: a lesser season of THE WIRE is still better than 99% of television out there).

Recommended �����though only if you carve out the time to rewatch the whole saga: what’s the point in listening to only the final notes of a symphony?

Three Process Revelations from a Week of Figuring Shit Out

1.) I am incapable of working with any semblance of depth on more than one fiction project per day, no matter how removed they may be from one another in form, content, or medium.

2.) Workblocks must be scheduled close together; any gap of longer than an hour - two at most - and I have to spend most of the second block starting over because I’ve forgotten everything I’ve written.

3.) Specific tasks and small assignments done in a disciplined, single-task manner are the key that keeps my brain open long enough to produce something, anything, of value upon which I can build the next day.