Journal Sept 6 2020

Okay... Let's do this.

First journal entry that I'm recording.

Making a lot of mistakes right now. That's standard though for the first few sentences of the day.

I'm also using a different app than normbal. BBedit. But, whatever.

This is just to show me writing a journal. I did the video that I've been thinking about for a long time over the past few days.

hang on, let me wrap this text... shit, i forgot where the wrap text link is. (I was messing around in the menu, but you can see that because it's out of frame... Maybe next time I should record this up by the menu even though that would be a little more uncomfortable for me.

There we go. It was under View < Text Display by the way...

Oh yeah, should make the text bigger too. Meant to do that earlier.

(oh, shit, there's the wrap stuff right at the menu in this window that I was in... I blame not seeing it on the fact that I'm just getting up.)

Okay.. looking for font size now...

Shit.... BBEdit crashed....

Yeah, that was the note right there. That's weird...

Anyway, guess we'll stick with Sublime Text here.

That also works well because I know the hot key to increase the font size.

Will have to look at the video to see how the font looks, but eyeballing it. I think it should be fine. Also, this is wrapping at column 78....

But, whatever.

See, this is the type of stuff that my journal has... Except, not really. I mean, I just write about whatever. I generally don't write about the app that I'm using but I might if I'm doing something new with it.

See, I doubt this one will be good. I was about to say, or that people will watch it, but I'm not sure people will watch any of them, but I largely don't care about that. I just think this is an interesting thing to do.

(oh, yeah, dear reader/viewer, sometimes it takes me a while to get to a subject. It's all bouncing around until I get there.)

(Okay, another quick meta commentary for folks that are watching the video... Except, whatever, it's just meta commentary. I realized that I should put a bunch of line endings below the actual text so that I can keep the text I'm actually working on toward the upper half of the screen. )

So, anyway... ummmmmm, apps? I forget what I was talking about...

Ah, right, why am I doing this... That's a question that's been in my head for the past few days while I was working on the first one of these where I was composing the tweet response

(this will also be interesting to watch when I bounch off to other apps to look stuff up. I don't do that nearly as much when I'm writng in my journal as when I'm doing a blog post. I'm all over the place on those. )

(hehehehe, pushing the text up the page reminds me of an old typewriter)

(too funny, when I did it a second ago, I was using the return key to push the text up, then I realized I could just use the mouse scroll wheel. But, now that I think about it, I think maybe I' going to click down to the bottom part of the page and then use the return key just to get the sound.

We'll see how that goes.

So, yeah.... Why am I doing this...

That's a tough one to answer. Once I start trying to voice an answer, it always feels weird.... Like, saying, "I'm trying to make a piece of art" sounds pretentious. But, that's kinda what I'm trying to do.

Also, and more in the ball park, I'm just trying something.

(ahhhh, see, I'm stuck at the moment, or, not stuck, but... shit, I'm not sure what the right word is... See, stuck is too much, I need something like stuck, but less so. Off the the thesaurus we gooooooo... Nope, none of those words help, mired is the closest. So, I need a phrase instead of a word.)

Whatever, not going to worry about that one now.

Anyway, I do want folks to like this, or watch it or whatever. But, while I'm writing it and making it, that's waaaaay in the back of my mind. Like, it's there, but it's so far in the corner I forget about it.

But, when I think about the time after I've posted it, I do want people to watch it. And see, I'm stuck here again trying to describe what I'm after for that... (What's good is writing this is helping me figure that out. Getting the words outta my head and onto paper (or, you know, the scree) is one of the ways I sort my thoughts. )

(So, I'm thinking I should put a little intro on this, but... wait... folks will be watching this from the start. So, that ship has sailed. Though, if I post it on the site, I could do it for that... That proably makes the most sense... And, I think I will post this. Part of that is just to get stuff posted)

The other thing that I'm thinking about right now is that this is the first one of these. I have no idea where this is going to go. There's a really good book called The War of Art (pretty sure this is it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007A4SDCG/) and one of the basic ideas in it is that you can't get to the second version of a thing until you've done the first.

Sure, super simple idea, but they say it way better. The better said idea is you can't... well, read the book for the way they talk about it, but you can't do your art without doing your art.

Here's an example, I've been thinking for a couple years about that video piece (and yes, I'm going to call it that) I just did. (hmmm, I'm editing some now... That's something I do from time to time in journal entries I think, but I'm hyper aware of it now since y'all are watching... But, no, yeah, I edit some in these, so that wasn't anything out of the ordinary.)

Okay, yeah, I go stream of consciousness in my journal entries, but now I'm thinking a little different sine there's an audience....

Yeah, this is interesting. This give me a third mode of writing.

1. Regular journal entries where I just go 2. Posts and pieces that I write for publication that I spend a lot of time edit. 3. This new thing where I write a journal entry live. (or, live to tape... though... I could also do one on twitch)

This most recent type already feels different. I can feel the hybrid nature of it now that I'm in it some.

It started out as a journal with just an inkling of an idea that I was recording, but like 95% of my brain was just treating it as a journal.

But, just a minute or two ago, something flipped. I had the realization that it would be better for the piece if I didn't go full stream of consciousness. (oh, yeah, that's something I though about before is writing little notes to the video audicce and then deleting them like I just did. there will be more of that)

Anyway, while I'm doing this for me, I'm also thinking about the audience... Oh, maybe that's a good way to think about them and describe it... I do these things for me, but I think about the audience.... Nope, not quite it.

Okay, here's where the thinking about the new form is in my head. I could write more about that, but I want to focus down.

So, the thing to end with right now is two things:

1. I can't describe why I do this, but I can throw you the reference of Sir Edmund Hillary. The way I heard it, when he was asked why he climbed Everest, his answer was "because it was there".

Well, if you ask me why I'm doing this, my answer is:

Because it's not there.

Yeah.... that'll do it.