October 2024
Hello friends, and welcome to my first dispatch.
Here, I’ll attempt to keep track of what I’ve accomplished this month, as even I’m beginning to lose track of all my projects. Having a central place to share all my activities was actually suggested by my friend Ulrik—so, thank you, Ulrik.
Solving Writer’s Block
This month, I had a huge realization: my writer’s block is actually solvable by creating multiple “arenas” for writing. I was blocked for months because I wanted to write polished, poetic essays like the ones in my Perth blog. But sometimes, you don’t have a full essay in you; instead, you have a bunch of hot takes, like those Sacruffi writes. So I created my own version of a bullet-point essay blog and called it my notes, where I wrote dozens and dozens of quick takes. They just came flying out because that’s what I had in me at the time.
At some point, I ran out of that kind of writing, and I began focusing more on technical documentation, which I published on yet another blog (insert another-one-dj-khaled.mp3 here), which I called my wiki. Writing has never been easier.
Another fundamental change I made was to do my writing in Obsidian. It’s a writing application similar to Microsoft Word, but it’s much cleaner and, most importantly, supports “vim keybindings,” which essentially let you edit with a lot of shortcuts. It’s just a joy to write with. I also explain how I connected my writing setup to publish to all my blogs at once in my article “Blogging at the Speed of Thought”.
Starting the Hypertext Collective Writing Group
Writing is something I’ve always wanted to do more of, and I was inspired by my friend Alex’s letter-writing sessions over Zoom to create my own version. I spent a few days building the infrastructure for the group: a website, a Twitter account, a forum, and a Substack. I felt like a possessed Amish man putting up a barn. Our first session on October 16th had eight attendees, which I thought was amazing, and the second session on October 23rd was fully booked. Seeing friends from around the world show up and interact with each other was something I could never have imagined. We’ve kept it going, and we plan to release a newsletter in November.
If you’re reading this and are interested in doing some personal writing, I encourage you to join one of our sessions! The setup is quite simple: around six of us show up on Zoom, say “hi” and chat for fifteen minutes, then write in pairs for an hour (you can decide how much you wish to talk), and then we reconvene to debrief for 15 minutes. Our events are hosted on Luma.
Some Thoughts on Berlin
I spent a lot of last winter in Berlin, and it affected me deeply. As the cold settles in Oslo, I’ve been curious about what made Berlin feel so different, and I realized it’s largely about nature. There are far more green spaces (not so “green” now, but you get the point). Grass, bushes, and trees make the cold feel much less brutal than the relentless urbanism of Berlin. There’s something about the unending streets and concrete that took so much out of me. I know winter hasn’t truly arrived yet, but I do sense a qualitative difference here.
Writing from Around My Blogs
I wrote quite a few posts in October on my notes blog, but here are a few that might be of interest:
See you next month
Thanks for reading! A lot has happened in November already and I can’t wait to share it with you next month.
Best regards,
Tim