A Work In Progress

I'm tired.

For some reason, re-entry into reality after the holidays this year has seemed more frantic and "compressed" than usual. Things went from 0 to 100mph in days (or hours?).

The calendar was overrun before I knew what had happened.

The to-do list grew exponentially.

Then I had to write a talk for a large group at work, and I decided to introduce a new tool into my workflow: IA Presenter. It's fantastic, but still pre-release, and I couldn't get the themes to look how I wanted them to.

More stress.

And while I had to switch back to Keynote and re-work it in the 11th hour, the talk was well received. Then the Twitter shit-show blew up.

I get that most of this is all self-induced stress around getting things done, but something feels "more" stressful this year. There's more weight to things. It's probably in my head. :)

While I was thinking about what I was going to write about or if it would be better to just take a "rest week," I stumbled upon this post on how the author "disconnected from the electric grid for eight months—in Manhattan."

What started as an experiment has turned into a habit I hope will inspire others.

Which is almost exactly where Makoism started, back in 2020.

Part organizational, part experiment, I decided to start posts every few weeks with interesting content I found from around the Internet. My goal is not to create another newsletter for people to subscribe to (don't we all have subscription fatigue?) but rather a place for me to curate some interesting topics and easily share them with anyone who finds this stuff fascinating.

In some odd way, this was a return to blogging for me. From 2001-2009, I regularly maintained a blog, Furrygoat (a random domain-name drawing), where I would muse on random technology or things about life.

But there, I owned by content. It was on my domain, and somewhere along the way, like many others, I got a bit lazy: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

But what I've found, as I've been playing around with Mastodon, and I've been thinking more about my own "space" here on the Internet. And a lot of what I've been noodling around here has inspired others.

I've also been thinking about Premeditatio Malorum, the premeditation of evil. Especially around what's been going on with Twitter. How people interact with TikTok. Heck - the Seattle school district has even sued the social media giants over mental health.

So I've been weighing that and imagining that things can go wrong with all this social stuff, and the best thing to do, is to prepare for that. When shit happens, you can deal with it.

Similar to my life. This space is a work in progress.

Right now I'm thinking about a few new ways to shake up the format over the following weeks and trying some things to see what sticks. The design here has been the same for three years, and it's time to kick over a few rocks.

It is essential to play, experiment, and see what works. And what needs to be fixed. So apologizes while the dust settles...

Don't fret - I'm still going to muse on business, leadership, stoicism, technology, and storytelling. Continuous evolution, though, as I play with all of this.

If you see something you like, or even better - don't like - just let me know. ;)

If you enjoy these posts, you can buy me a coffee ☕️, or if you'd rather keep up with my daily ramblings, follow via RSS, on Mastodon or keep reading my posts on this blog.

This weeks "Deep Links"

One change I'm playing with is the "deep links" - here are a few nuggets I found across the Internet that resonated with me over the last week. I don't see a ton of clicks thru on the links, so do people even look at this? :)

So, to make my life easier today - here are just the links:

• "Taking over a Dead IoT Company" - Read
• "Laid-Off Workers Are Flooded With Fake Job Offers" - Read
• "How the designers of GoldenEye 007 made use of “Anti-Game Design”" - Read
• "Annual Performance Reviews Ruin Everything" - Read
• "The Seven Dispositions of Task Management" - Read
• "Horrible Therapist - Random Comic Generator" - Read
• "How Awe Can Change Our Lives For The Better" - Read
• "Your Best Work" - Read
• "Don’t Confuse Motion with Progress" - Read
• "Reaching Peak Meeting Efficiency" - Read
• "How Pitfall Builds its World" - Read

Fin

Be well. ✌🏻