Where were you when oil went negative?
4.20.2020
I’m not proud of what I’ve written so much as I’m proud of the fact that I’ve written. The first chapter of my novel/novella is done.
I’m excited to have picked up When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi on Kindle for $2.99. The author’s bravery in the face of certain death continues to inspire me long after my first reading.
I tried administering CBT to my dog while she was on “the couch”. We got a lotta work ahead of us.
My first live music spiritual experience was courtesy of Radiohead in 2008, shortly after I had moved to Texas. Music had been my drug of choice since I was a teenager, and experiencing three members playing the same heavy beat during the beginning of “There, There” reached some primal part of me that had never been touched before.
The song remains my favorite Radiohead tune and has some of my favorite lines:
Just ‘cause you feel it
Doesn’t mean it’s there
How fallible we are, how poor our judgment…
There’s always a siren
Singing you to shipwreck
So many promises sound so pretty yet lead only to disaster…
We are accidents
Waiting to happen
Always reminds me of humanity’s imperfect nature…
I don’t know why this song and that experience are in my head right now, and I don’t know why I feel compelled to write about them in this messy way, but I do and so I am.
I recently obligated myself to write at least 500 words every day. I intended to fill my obligations by writing fiction, whether vignettes or flash or stories that went beyond 500 words, but I’ve instead filled them with philosophical rants.
I’m fourteen years old again.
Sometimes I use MindNode to outline story ideas, but I’m not sure it’s worth it for me to continue the subscription.
Welp, the Mind Map plugin for Obsidian has me covered.
Epictetus has been dropping some fire in the last couple entries of The Daily Stoic:
4.10
It isn’t events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.
4.11
Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Last night the sky was spoopy.
Spring time is baseball time.
I’ve been listening to “A Real Hero” incessantly over the last few days and have been wanting to rewatch Drive, so it’s only fitting that I switch my Obsidian theme to 80s Neon.
This week, inspired by the Shuffle plugin for Obsidian, I made a goal to write 500 words every day. Since making this goal, I have written every day but have hit 500 words only once–my first day, when I wrote two prompts.
The problem is that if I have specific goals (such as including three certain words in a story), I focus only on those requirements and try to squeeze them in as quickly as possible, neglecting to write an actual story.
Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is the first book I’ve given up on this year. I would have thought a book that rewrites history so that the Axis powers win World War II would be much more interesting by the time I was a third of the way through it.
I haven’t had much inspiration for new stories lately. Fortunately, the Shuffle plugin for Obsidian has me covered.
I’ve gone back and forth over whether to keep everything on one site or to separate certain things.
I’ve decided to put my creative writing on another site, Turkey House Publishing. Much excite!
I’ve started working on my own writing manifesto, a declaration of my writing goals and philosophy. It’s fun to try to figure out where everything fits in.
Obligatory “I spent some time outside” selfie
I almost forgot I was still in DFW.
The last couple writing group meetings have gotten derailed, but we had a make-up session tonight. I always feel better after talking to my support group.
Making order out of chaos
I don’t know why it took me so long to realize my Obsidian vault could benefit from an Index/Home page. Now it’s all coming together.
Using metadata rather than hashtags is a good way to clean things up in Obsidian.
I’d say the daily notes portion of my Obsidian setup is coming along nicely.
I’m hoping that the daily notes can be the foundation of Obsidian going forward. At least until Obsidian has a mobile app, I’ll likely start dumping all the day’s notes into the daily entry and then edit them whenever I’m at my computer again.