I deactivated my Twitter account a while ago. This post makes it official, I suppose! Sorry for the delay.
You can find me on Mastodon at @quollism@mastodon.social
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The Problem with NFTs
Since I’ve got a blog and I’m in and out of creative spaces, and because I’ve seen how predatory & relentless the folks pushing NFTs are and folks getting caught up in it, have an incredibly timely video.
Yes, it’s two hours and eighteen minutes long, but it’s a compelling & incredible educational two hours and eighteen minutes – especially if you enjoyed The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short. (Both get a mention.)
Just so my personal position is clear: blockchain, cryptocurrency and especially NFTs can all collectively fuck off, and the same goes double for any advocates & enablers of those ecosystems.
Happy new year!
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Humble fragments
Just checking in. I’m still alive, and fully double vaccinated to boot.
Creativity-wise, I’m making little things here and there. It’s in unpredictable and short-lived bursts, but that’s fine. It’s good to be doing very humble and fragmentary work at a very humble and fragmentary scale.
It’s good because while I’ve got creative outlets and I’m still thinking about the character of my creative output, there’s no danger I’ll get any big ideas. While I’m still getting my head straight, that’s all I need (and all I can probably handle).
And I hope you’re having as good a time of things as you can, yourself.
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A letter to no-one in particular
(Not to say if you’re reading this that you, kind reader, are “no-one in particular” in all contexts. You’re definitely someone. Language is a blunt instrument that way.)
I have a draft journal entry which spans all of 2019. It was all about getting my diagnosis, the various trials and tribulations of that year, everything else. It was a hard year, 2019.
The last line of the 2019 journal was “2020, please be good to us”.
2020 was a seemingly infinite landscape of shittiness, with the odd gold nugget poking out. Some good and useful things came out of 2020, but mostly it was just shit. And more shit. Shit with the thickened consistency of suffocating, pitiless mud.
Many of us found ourselves in front of a proverbial Mirror of Truth, caked in all of this woe and desperation and exhaustion. We didn’t recognise ourselves anymore. We’d let other people down. Other people had let us down. Never mind that we were flat out keeping ourselves going in deeply unfamiliar territory, taxed and challenged in ways we could scarcely fathom, as the old ways of living became more and more like a strange dream – as though we’d come back from a holiday which all felt unreal and impossible and even a little frightening from our present moment.
I was worried for 2021 – not relieved, if I’m honest. There would be a lot of clean-up and mending and fixing. Further disintegration seemed inevitable. The work to rebuild the mess into something better was overwhelming to even think about, running on fumes as we are.
Still, running on fumes is marginally better than permanently conked out.
It’s near the end of October.
Here in Western Australia, we’re still conducting testing for COVID 19, but despite that there’s no official evidence of community transmission at all. Current COVID cases in WA are either travellers returning from overseas or the crew members of seafaring vessels.
Our state border is still closed and there are minimum-area-per-customer limits. But that’s about it.
We’re a long way from anywhere, so we’re doing relatively OK here.
But even without COVID to worry about, I’ve had a bit of a crappy run. Mostly related to job stress and knock-on effects, being too tired and anxious to make things out of hours, etc.
After a month-long break, I’ve remembered the day job is food on the table and a roof over my head and the resources to bring my own ideas and passions to fruition.
But there’s a bunch of resentment and paranoia and negativity and disengagement and weltschmerz fogging my brain, which has been getting worse over time. 2020 added to it, but it’s been simmering since I shelved AMITS in 2017.
How dare they make me so busy and stressed out that I put three years of effort on the back burner and look like a complete waster after what I said on that stage at Blender Conference oh god i am such a bloody embarrassment i wasted the time and kindness of so many amazing people who the hell did i think i was fooling (etc)
Understanding that connection between stress and anxiety and creative drop-off hasn’t helped deal with that feeling of indignation at all.
Indignation is a hell of a drug to kick, truly.
But this indignation gets me nowhere. And with enough time, nowhere is death.
And I want to be somewhere again.