Morning Me, 16-May-23

Good morning folks and welcome to the show, let’s see what’s rattling around in the ol’ brainpan today…

Got a ton of new stuff kicked out yesterday, lot of backend work on this new project management tool. I’m super excited about that, I’ve been trying for years to find just the right PM tool for me and the way I work, and this one seems to be doing the job. I’ve got some playing around to do with it yet, but I think it’s going to be a powerful help for my work and my personal life as well.

I haven’t yet figured out how, but I’m going to make the reporting tool viewable for supporters and add it to the “perk” list, since I figure details like that are in the package of stuff that pretty much nobody’s going to be interested in except supporters.

Fact is the tool is for me, first and foremost, to help me stay organized and stop losing good ideas to the ongoing rush of trying to keep up with my own brain. Sharing it and showing everyone else is just a lucky artifact of its abilities that allows me some transparency while also not getting stuck in a loop of writing a twenty-minute Facebook status every time I have a thought I need to chew on or a little bit of happy fluff I want to share. Like this:

I don’t want to get too deep into this today because I’ve got the JH AfterParty newsletter to get released. As I’ve mentioned previously I’m trying to get in the habit of having that ready to drop for the advance edition by 9am on Tuesdays, and then the public release of the previous weeks’ edition at noon (all times Eastern). This week because I just started this “Morning Me” thing and didn’t want to skip it on the second day, I went ahead and decided to let the AfterParty be a little late because I didn’t finish it last night like I should’ve. In the future, if there’s a conflict the AfterParty will take precedence and the MM will get skipped.

I should note here also that while I loosely intend to try to get one of these out daily, I’m not committing to it. My personal goal is to try to hold the line at no fewer than four “Morning Me” posts per week.

I noticed last night that my FB login app for the comment system is not working properly, which leads me to suspect the rest of the social logins aren’t working either. I’ll probably have to take half a day or a day in the next few to hack that out and see what the problem is.

Sidebar: if y’all notice something broken, tell me. Please. Thanks.

I really can’t be effusive enough about my current state of mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve never “had it together” at the level I do right now, in terms of how I’m approaching and accomplishing my work. I know there’s a lot of noise and confusion right now because I’m doing a lot of things in many different directions, but it should get more steady and stable and predictable around here steadily and quickly.

On that note, I’m giving a few days to make sure I haven’t overwhelmed myself but I’m probably going to try to work up a second daily (or sorta-daily) issue newsletter, like this one but about news, events, etc. that are catching my eye or potentially going to work up into a bigger piece. A bit like a short version of the excellent Heather Cox Richardson newsletter (man, I can get 120wpm freehand when I’m really cranking it out, she must be using a voice parser or have a couple of people typing for her or something, I seriously have no idea how she creates such long, comprehensive newsletters every day….and I’m the guy most people are like TOO MANY WORDS SLOW DOWN WITH ALL THE WORDS ITS TOO MUCH! I’ll try to get a link to her substack in an upcoming MM.

And with that I’m going to get on with my day. First priority is getting this JH AfterParty newsletter written, and then I’m back into content creation wherever I pick up, probably will get to work on the second part of that series about the national debt.

I’m probably going to stop distributing the MM to my “other” FB pages like Antifa, Progressive American, and Custode. This newsletter is really just about me for my people, my way of staying in touch as my work pulls me ever farther from the levels of social media engagement I’m used to. As such, I think cranking it out to those pages would be more annoying than interesting to their readers.

Please don’t forget my existence is predicated on your support so please remember to lean hard on those like and share buttons. We’re past the point in history where worrying about being “spammy” is even on the radar. Flood the net with JH as best you can – plenty of content to do it with right here! – and JH is gonna keep working on making sure you’ve got plenty of material to work with.

Love y’all, don’t forget to pitch in few if you can at the money page. (Sustained support is critical! Far better to have forty supporters sending me five bucks a month than have one person send me $250 one time. Check out the options for weekly and monthly support via PayPal and Patreon at that link.) There’ll be a lot more coming on that, too, but that conversation is better held at the AfterParty. Have a happy upbeat song to get your day off to a great start! You can always count on George Harrison for a smile…