I've spent a dizzying portion of my online life trying my hardest to have one name for everything. While I mostly succeeded on my own terms, my preferred name does still vary slightly across different contexts. I wish I wasn't so picky about the details, but since I am, I suppose it would be best to be explicit about it.

I was introduced to Alexander Panos' Nascent earlier this month. Trying to describe a project of this magnitude in a way that captures its essential details without being reductive might be impossible. Here's what I can tell you up-front: no other album has taught me more about music. I think you should listen to it in solitude when you have a moment to spare. The rest of this article is my best effort to pinpoint those essential details.

Today, I released my new song relentless future (feat. EZGi) and simultaneously announced my "album in progress" Light & Matter. There's a lot I want to leave up to interpretation or otherwise unspoken, but equally as much that I want to say about it all. So, here are my thoughts, organized roughly by subject:

Recurring dates have held an almost superstitious position in my life for as long as I can remember. I'll give some examples: for a few of my teenage years, the 2nd day of a quarter (e.g. April 2, October 2, etc.) had a reputation for being emotionally turbulent in some way. A majority of my published simfile packs were released on either January 1 or April 20 (try to contain your laughter); little traditions etched into the calendar. But there's one big recurrence in my life: a comet, invisible to everyone but me, that appears in the night sky every six years. It's a deadline, and it arrives in 10 days.

The first time I used Notion databases, I knew that they were the closest realization of my vision for the perfect personal data authoring tool. They're such an obvious incremental improvement over spreadsheets that I struggle to understand why nothing like them was available to consumers a decade ago. But, alas, Notion is funded by venture capital, the devil's mark that ensures their product will only get worse over time. The only way I'll resolve my grievances with this software is if I replace it. But... with what, exactly?

There's more to life than this.

I've redesigned meow.garden from the ground up, eschewing the "digital garden" concept in favor of something a little more home-grown. The "cool stuff" from my monthly notes have been split out into their own section, and the more interesting notes have been moved to a chronological sequence of posts.

For music producers, new WIP feeling is the emotion associated with elevating a project file from a sketch to the start of a song — a new work in progress. At least, that's what I call it in my head. I assume this feeling is more-or-less universal among us. Not everything you throw into the DAW works, and finding something that does work can feel a bit like hitting the bullseye on a moving target.

I have two questions for you. First: are you trying to get something done? Maybe it'll take weeks or months to finish, or maybe it's a particularly demanding or frustrating task. It could be a phone call, an art piece, a blog post, or anything else that takes your time & effort. Second question: when are you going to work on it? Let's keep the question simple: if it's a long task, you don't have to finish it in one sitting. If it's annoying, you don't have to enjoy the process. All you have to do is work on it, and all I want to know is when.

The numbers are an integral feature of every modern social media platform. They comprise likes, shares (e.g. retweets), follows, replies, views, and whatever other forms of engagement apply to the particular platform.