October 2022

Like every year, the lack of external, institutional structures, timetables and deadlines during the summer (holidays) has set me off to a freewheeling, unstructured mode of work. After a semester in which I have put myself at the mercy of not one but two departmental timetables, I really enjoyed some unstructured, relaxed, spontaneous tripping and thinking, in the hot hot heat. But the lack of goals to work towards, the slow but steady abandonment of established daily and weekly procedures ate into my discipline. The invasion of Ukraine has been a source of obsessive news-checking ever since it started in late February, but particular my Twitter obsession went completely overboard over the past two months. To reign in my compulsive checking, and replace it with a more healthy automatic habit, I bought a used Kindle the other week (my first overzealous failed attempt at turning myself into a reader by adopting a Kindle was circa 2010-11), uploaded Marshal Berman’s All that is solid melts into air, and have been trying to carry it with me and open it up wherever I go. It’s going ok so far, but I guess I have yet to find a way to engage with books in a way where I am satisfied with how I hold in and keep information from them in a useful, worthwhile way.

I have been doing freelance work, it is not mentally/creatively stimulating, but it is extremely well-paid, and leaves me much time to expend my creative energies on projects I am actually personally invested in (which I have been doing anyway, except now I’m not running a completely negative balance). As a side-effect of that work I get to listen to many actually reasonably interesting talks and discussions about social housing, and construction in the context of sustainability/the climate crisis, and it’s bleak. Which is nothing new to me I guess, but it’s maybe the first time that I see people professionally (rather than privately or politically) acknowledging it, while most people around me are gouging away on beef and flying around the globe as if there was no tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking, which always just makes me think of this:

I have a new idea of a physical object I want to build (a set of three digital clocks), I am already doubtful whether it will be ‘worthwhile’ or ‘interesting’ but I guess the imperative is to do what you gotta do, because to be yourself is all that yadda yadda and if it’s crap so be it. I have an old idea too that I was going to realise this year but I have been getting stuck with starting because I can’t do some of it by myself, so I guess that will be my bigger project, which will require some collaboration, some risking, some risk of failure I suppose. Risk of failure is a good one, maybe that should be my goal, to try and do something that could go seriously wrong, or badly, or be disappointing. Something public, something out there. I have a few ideas. Do I have a big goal, a path forward? It seems like my breakdown of journalling has destroyed my prospect of long-term goals, but really I have never had a working system of long-term goals, just a feeling of having had some. I guess I will just make a new one and check it. It’s hard to return to big, long-term goals. To come up with them when you’re in a mood where you don’t feel like you need to achieve anything big, where you don’t feel like you want to achieve anything big. What if it was just true? There is a difference between something “big” and something that is important for you though. Living small can still be valued living as long as you consciously commit to it. This is something I will think about in the next week, when I am spending a week in Portugal, a plane trip away that I personally find rather unneccessary, especially in the light of the impending planetary catastrophe and how it pushes me, us all, over our sustainable annual limit of greenhouse gas emissions. I didn’t even feel like going for the sake of traveling, of being in a different place, but I guess that is a luxury of having lived in the ‘Far East’ for such a long time. I’m just done with traveling, at least for a while. People say it’s good, it can expand your horizon but I, maybe because I am so strongly affected by my external environment, find it difficult to feel at rest, at peace, truly enjoy myself in a new environment, so I criticise people who enjoy travel for the sake of travel as hedonistic. It’s good to see different worlds of course, but truly there are very different worlds closer to everyone’s home as well, if we only bothered to look more closely. It takes time to see the differences, by resting in a place, not by scooting and jet-setting all over the place.

August 2022

For most of my (digital) life I have been trying to log records about my moods, behaviours and activities. This intensified over the past few years not just because such things became easier to track, but also because I had the sense that my life was following particular (erratic) patterns or rhythms that I wanted to get to the bottom of. In the end it often felt like my attempts at tracking things were themselves part of these rhythms, new systems for tracking filled the void in my life when there were times that I didn’t have much else going on, or when I didn’t feel like working on any of my old projects, times when I’d hit a runt, and was looking for analysis as a way out. Either way, the grand analysis of all the data collected never followed. My last breakdown of data collection happened in June, when life caught up with me and I was too busy and my days too fill to sit down and try to track anything. There were some stupid timewasting activities in there for sure, but all in all it felt fun, my life was full. Now that I am free again would be a natural time to start tracking again, give it another go, but I don’t think I will. I even feel like I have a better idea now of what things, what triggers would be most useful to track manually, but I’m already doubting myself. Maybe I will just write them down, and then move on. I still have a few apps doing automatic tracking which are producing a real trove of data, so in the meantime that seems to be the more effective way to collect data for later analysis.

Apart from that I have finally made some space in my room, which means I have returned to having a semblance of a workspace. I guess I could work in it now. Apart from fine-tuning my first LED display piece I will also have to wrap up its transportation box and handling/installation instructions. I will also pick up working on my corporate identity, which means practicing some graphic design.

June 2022

• I am exhibiting my first piece as an art student
• I am preparing documentation for my current projects for an online presentation
• I am singing another choir concert in Musikverein
• I am re-instating regular long-term check-ups on my break/reflection days

May 2022

• I am finishing my first polished (framed) installation object
• I am recording two more interviews for a short documentary
• I am singing a choir concert in Musikverein
• I am playing around with Obsidian for note-taking/personal wiki/self-tracking

April 2022

• I am recording online interviews for cutting into a short documentary
• I am MariKondoing all of my possessions
• I am setting up a new paper-based, visual goal-setting calendar for long-term planning

March 2022

• I am learning how to work with wood
• I am building an LED display piece
• I joined a choir again

February 2022

• I am making my first plaster casts
• I am working on refining my artistic practice through theory
• I am actually picking up Chinese reading+writing practice again
• I am watching one film per week
• I am recording my first interview

January 2022

• I am working on making my typing more ergonomic
• I am sharing my work with other people for feedback and input
• I am adopting an earlier bedtime routine
• I am picking up Chinese reading practice again

December 2021

• I am working on the sound setup and mixing of a multi-hour interactive live-multicasted webstream
• I am getting rid of/selling a lot of my stuff that I haven’t touched in years
  • 1 box of unworn clothes
  • 10 musical instruments
    1. DigiTech multi-effect pedal
    2. Squier strat
    3. Vox guitar amp
    4. JamMan loop station
    5. e-piano damper pedal
    6. Wah pedal
    7. Boss distortion
    8. Park bass amp
    9. SansAmp amp modeller
    10. Behringer equalizer
• I am taking the first steps going public with my corporate identity
• I am documentating the first few views of Vienna

November 2021

• I am restarting my journalling, logging and creative practice
• I am setting up a new (2nd hand) computer to work on, with reproducible:
  • dotfiles
  • task/project management pipeline
• I am creating my first complex 3d printer prints/models
• I am putting my new website (this) online at some new URL somewhere

October 2021

• I am sorting out customs papers for taking a dog from China to the EU
• I am driving a car full of stuff 2400km across the country to get to our flight back to Europe
• I am moving city/country/continent
• I am starting art school

September 2021

• As this is my last month before I’m moving, I will continue to visit + document views in my area (at least 2 a week) I am preparing (at least) 5 pieces to show at a private mini-exhibition in our apartment
  • the another day (pt. 1) light replay box that I was working on last month
  • the Marie Kondo Adversarial Pile
  • a new border inspection video (of the 49th parallel?)
  • a photographic archive of the views I’ve been documenting
  • everybody else
  • a little random walk LED display?
• I work 8-10 hours a week teaching English to (self-motivated) adult students for the first time – I find the preparation arduous, but it’s an interesting/new work experience
• I am packing up my belongings into 2x23kg suitcases, and giving away lots of stuff

August 2021

• I am still working on a new website (this one)
• Having worked out a framework for documenting views last month, I will continue visiting + documenting views in my area
• I am packing up my room and getting rid of stuff, which is a painful endeavour just like any other time I’ve ever moved house.
• I am producing some mock graduation certificates in the local style, including getting mock office stamps manufactured as gifts for former colleagues
• I haven’t made much progress on finishing up my LED project (see July below), but I will tackle three concrete steps to move forward:
  1. write up and publish my comparison of software PWM performance on Arduino
  2. update the text display to include information about outdated playback data
  3. solder a new D1 Mini shield which can connect both the PWM LEDs and text display

July 2021

• I’m working on a new website (this one).
• I want to pick up/finish some work about views that I started about a year ago. Last year I thought a lot about views and viewpoints in public places, how they are not necessarily appreciated, protected or preserved, and are in fact rapidly getting privatised or otherwise occupied in the city where I live. Since I will be moving soon, this is my last chance to try some systematic analysis and documentation of the sites that originally inspired these thoughts. Apart from wrapping up a little piece of unfinished writing from last year, I also want to first “approach” or identify some local views in a quantitative way, before physically seeking out the sites and documenting them in some way (probably geometric photography).
• I will be going on a 5 day hike mostly above 4000m altitude.
• My goal this year was to practice creating more physical objects, by which I guess I just mean LED stuff. I’ve built 3 little things which, while conceptually good, were disappointing in their physical execution. I will continue to work on refining one of the dynamic lamps by trying out more diffuse/background lighting arrangements.
• I’m doing daily physio exercises especially for my knees and also back/shoulders.