notetaking enthusiasms, part two

in

(previously…)

Some updates to yesterday’s enthusiasm

  • I've yet to fall on my face; in fact, the more I let myself play with this index-card-for-everything method, the more I love it.

  • For leaving the house, I've replaced the Dango notebook in my Dango pen wallet with tiny, cutup index cards. If legible, I tape them onto a larger card and file them away when I do my filing (usually at the start of a writing session). If illegible, I recopy them.

  • So far, the best thing about the notebook experiment / card switch is that I'm far more judicious about what I actually commit to pen and card. However, if I need to get something out of my head and I know – I've got a pretty good sense of whether its worth a card or not – I won't need it later, I keep a large post-it on the other side of the big wallet for scratch/scraps. I then affix it to the day's timeblock card and file it away. New post-it daily.

  • Speaking of scratchpads: I've started using the daily notes feature in Obsidian again: a more frictionless (read: not illegible) scratch – though to think, sometimes i need the friction of the cards. DN also functions as my work diary.

  • When I write on paper, I find my brain a bit freer. Let it rip.

  • Thinking: when I send the month’s newsletter, I’ll use the afterhaze as a time to process and discard unneeded notes.

  • Goal of this method: eliminate redundant notetakings and the need to transfer or duplicate.

  • And not fall on face.

a notetaking experiment initiated with enthusiasm which may fall flat on its face

in

Experiment, or another of my "why didn't I try this before other than I've been trapped in the same cycle for twenty years in spite of my best efforts to break out" endeavors: ditching notebooks entirely for index cards (I buy them in bulk quantities of 1000) and my modified physical Zettelkasten system.

So far: I've brought out my old Field Notes wallet (Coal Creek leather) and ditched the Field Notes and replaced them with blank index cards. I've shifted my time blocking and bloodsugar tracking to an index card paper clipped to the inside (also the home of my Inputs) that I'll put in the ZK cabinet along with the notes taken during that day.

Journal entries will be written on cards and filed away (given that I timestamp everything, this should work.)

On the other side of the wallet: many blank sticky notes. Lamy AL-STAR the only pen I have that fits, which solves my “which pen do I use now” quandary / useless thinking when I should probably be thinking of other things thing.

A sort of shedding of the middleman: the notebooks functioned as an illegible mess of thoughts I never used again. The ones I decided to keep were rewritten on cards which I treated as an index system. Far easier (and cheaper) to write them on the cards straightaway. Will likely keep a scratch card just to throw things down that probably wouldn't rate a card anyhow and file it in the cabinet with the daily timeblock / bloodsugar.

Potential pitfalls: I've tended in times past to think on paper, drawing things, etc. Suppose I can do those on the big dry erase board given that I recognize that I rarely, if ever, reference those notes to begin with.

The experiment begins. Will update as I succeed or fall flat on my face.

convergent divergences and divergent convergences and other work-related ruminations

in

Over the last few days, I've returned my attention (MainFictionThing required a period of percolation) to a script that I've long been noodling with: something wild and crazy and fun, a love letter to the cinematic and cultural influences of my study-in-contrast grandfathers mixed through the lens of a challenge to myself because someone far more capable (and inspirational) than I admitted to me that it was the one thing they couldn't crack, my "accessible look" - to steal a term from MAKING THE CUT - divergent convergence and/or convergent divergence from the inaccessible "literary shit" of MainFictionThing (I admitted to myself long ago that I will never be considered mainstream or accessible and I'm great with that) but I'm at something of a crossroads: is it worth my while to continue working on something that will require someone(s) else to see to fruition? Do I want to continue to allow myself this dream, this inevitable heartbreak of incompletion and total lack of eventual consumptive form? Or do I say fuck it and roll with enjoying myself, writing something for the sake of writing it because I want it to exist and worry about the rest of it later?

Clearly, I've landed on the latter: I don't know what the future will bring and, honestly, in these sacred hours of The Work, I don't particularly care – if it becomes more than a script, great; if it remains that, fine: I don't need to pander (not that I ever did: that was the vulnerability exploited by media social in a decade of "joblessness" when what I was really doing was exploring my calling and moving forward with life on my terms) and I don't need to prove myself to anyone but myself.

And with what I'm working on now, I've finally embraced that.

thinking on feet while standing still or vice versa

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Finding, at least for now, that standing while working seems to trigger my ability to let things come and worry about them later, to think better and with more clarity, far more than sitting (though I am writing this utterly forgettable thing that might become a part of another thing but for now will exist only in this ephemeral vacuum while sitting, of course): thinking on my feet is good for me.

(To facilitate more comfort, I added an old yoga mat – my dear, deceased Marley's anti-slip mat that we used to take everywhere with us to unfurl across the bane of Marley's existence, the hardwood and/or linoleum floor – between the Dollar Store area rug and concrete that comprise the Sanctum’s floor.)

Can source my propensity for feet-thinking, probably, to my percussion / marimba days as much as anything: with the exception of drumset and timpani (sometimes), I stood for all performances, practices, and etc; in other words, I'm used to moving around to tap into that certain something something that some would call flow but that I will simply call an enhanced ability to put one word in front of the other.

Also: standing makes my back hurt a lot less: moving is the only time ye olde herniated discs aren’t causing me agony. Who would have thought that the amelioration of pain would lead to more clarity of thought. Wow. Stunning.

want to v have to

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Ongoing:

this mental guerilla fracas between what I want to write and what I have – what I am compelled, via surrounding circumstance and requisite processings - to write and being the devoted companion of a desire to write in a different rhythm than the one I've been sporting for the last several years.

A desire to transcend my own rhythms via my work? Perhaps.

The answer is, as always, to let what happens in the midst of The Work happen, to stay out of my own way (as best I'm able), and to surprise myself; the biggest surprise will be, I think, an increase in my capacity for staying out of my own way.

self-respect / habit (being a conversational addendum)

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A long-needed reunion chat with a great friend yielded a discussion on how I manage to find the motivation to get up every day and write whatever it is write for no one in particular: I'm not, after all, technically on any deadline - outside of my own self-imposed ones; I haven't been contracted or asked to write anything for anyone since 2017; but, over the last year, I've churned out more stories and essays and informalities and newsletters and podcasts to this space for no one's amusement but my own than I have in the last eight years.

My initial thought was that I had simply made it habitual to the point that I literally wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't. And that's very true. But I've also realized that I left one part out of it, a notion from the source of all wisdom worth having, Mr. Leonard Cohen:

"[Writing] begins with an appetite to discover my self-respect. To redeem the day. So the day does not go down in debt. It begins with that kind of appetite."

I do what I do every day because it's what I do every day: it's how I refill my self-respect – it's how I make each day feel as though it was lived, so it does not, as Mr Cohen says, go down in debt.

in

“In my experience, lyrics are almost always seemingly just not coming. This is the tearful ground zero of song writing — at least for some of us. This lack of motion, this sense of suspended powerlessness, can feel extraordinarily desperate for a songwriter. But the thing you must hold on to through these difficult periods, as hard as it may be, is this — when something’s not coming, it’s coming. It took me many years to learn this, and to this day I have trouble remembering it.”

— Nick Cave

zettel/obsidian process updates

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Wanted to provide an update on my current writing / Zettelkasten workflow (Obsidian + Analogue) list as it currently stands in this, the era of the Mac Mini; maybe you'll find something useful in it.

Zettel

...  or at least my ANALOG (I do not use Obsidian as a zettelkasten system – though I do transfer cards to Obsidian on a project basis – for the purposes I'm about to lay out) version of it: In our six months together, I've come to think of the ZK as less a repository for all notes and more of an index of the notebooks/journals and books that populate my library (appropriate, given that it rests inside an antique library card catlog). While I use tags, I rarely link notes up – but I am an inveterate highlighter, with each type of note – from my notebooks, from a book – fiction and non- – and "used" highlighted with a corresponding color in both index card and in book/notebook. Also, I rarely include a full note on a card: it's mostly a direction to a particular page in a particular notebook (Volume 27, currently) or a duly marked and bracketed book.

While the copious notecard-taking has dwindled, it's still useful, and, while I don't often reference it, the creation of handwritten cards, both from notebooks and from books, is the best retention tool I've come up with. Exceedingly useful though still – I will reiterate here as I have done in the past – not for everyone.

Obsidian

I've fallen more in love with it since switching over to the Mini: SO NICE to write in and work with. Dig the hell out of foldable headings: huge help with focus, especially as my drafts are documents assembled from different pieces (fragments and shards).

Started using their Daily Notes feature as a process of processing workhour notebook scribbles, as a reference for the next chunk of work, and as a record of music I've listened to for returning EarBliss features here. While I'm trying to stick with writing in the notebook first and following my therapist's method of scribbling during a session then pausing every 15 minutes by saying "let's type this up," I do find the frictionless capture exceedingly useful (especially when paired with my "New Zettelkasten note" hotkey which sends fragments and shards right to my inbox); handwritten notes more for processing than capture? Starting to lean that way.

Oh, right: the ability to create templates and easily insert them is spectacular. I have one for interviews, for all sorts of things - and they've become absolutely essential. Still a lot of work in migration, but I know it will be worth it.

Both the ZK and Obsidian are, nonhyperpolically, transformative. (If you've got any questions, shoot me an email.)