Hello Patrons and supporters and welcome to another edition of the JH AfterParty, exclusively available to you for one week before being released to the general public!
Finally started seeing some balance to the unremitting upswing I’ve been on for the last couple of months. Last Thursday was pretty much a no-go for the day, just sat down and everything I picked up to work on my brain just went “mbleh” and refused to chug. So I gave it the day off and Friday was better, weekend okay, yesterday afternoon kinda meh, but still nothing like the major crashes I’ve experienced in less stable, more chaotic living situations in the last few years. Obviously that’s not to say that my depression is the fault of my living situation, but rather that those situations made it more difficult for me to manage. I’m not feeling any impending sense of a giant crash or anything, just learning to manage myself better generally so it’s not always full throttle or dead stop. That’s part of the reason I’m opening up new sections of the site, too – helps me feel less guilty for doing anything that doesn’t potentially generate income if I can use it to generate a little income.
Got some stuff done over the weekend as well – the Substack newsletter of course, and a new Medium article about media disinformation, plus other bits of content and the new “Morning Me” newsletter. I’ve started that off being just a “hey it’s morning time here’s me” thing, but I’m now starting to morph it into more of a “here’s a news item or two and a few of my thoughts about it to get your day rolling with your brain engaged” groove, as I’m getting the routine tightened down and everything in place to make it a true production process much as I’ve done with this newsletter over the last four weeks.
I know it’s tedious to watch sometimes, but hopefully at least a few people are actually interested in how I do all this and my thoughts in process. All of this back-end and infrastructure and template work is designed to make production smooth and efficient, so I don’t find myself suddenly overwhelmed trying to produce six newsletters, five video episodes, five podcast episodes, plus actual content every week.
Oh, yeah. As of yesterday I’ve started doing the “Morning Me” as a video and podcast series in addition to the “print” version. That’ll be an ongoing thing. I’m considering doing the same with this but haven’t had time to look properly in to doing it with the supporter preview functionality protected – again, an issue that seems pretty petty and meaningless in this context but will be far easier to solve now than later down the road when it’s standing in the way of “real” content going out. But as of yesterday you can get your “Morning Me” as a video cast on my YouTube channel and as an audio podcast through any of the links on my site – it’ll still show up as “In My Room” in some players, for now – I will have to create an entire new infrastructure to properly handle podcasting again but this’ll get it out of the gate for now. There’s also be a download link on each newsletter so you can just snag the MP3 and listen to it however you want.
I laughed way too hard at this:
That project management software (ProjeQtOr) that I mentioned last week has been working out really well, easily the best free solution I’ve ever found in terms of working the way I work and helping me stay organized and on task, plus I’m losing fewer ideas because when I have one I can just open a ticket and then it’s there and eventually I’ll remember it and get back to it. That’s part of what’s empowering these multi-part series I’m doing like the gaming history and national debt pieces – I can plan them better and it gives me time to think of things like NOT writing them all as a single enormous article because hardly anyone reads those anymore. Haven’t had time to look into a “public” facing reporting tool for supporters yet, but it’s on the agenda.
Contributions are unfortunately way down, but that’s to be expected with no multimedia work going out. I’ve got a couple of pitch videos sketched out and some other stuff that’ll help that. Just reminds me how grateful I am to those of you who have been and/or are pitching in on the support; even though I’m in a much better place, I’m still way behind where I need to be to get this whole thing set up properly – right now I’m not even keeping up with my few basic bills, to say nothing of trying to help out the friend who’s putting me up and adding a ton of empowerment to all of this by doing so, and there’s a laundry list of expenses from gear to food to business licensing and taxes that needs handled.
The way that happens is with your support and that of other folks like you who are committed to doing what you can to help nudge the battleship Humanity a quarter-degree or so in a more sane and sustainable direction. Please do keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming short video that will be framed specifically as a tool for those of you who have been supportive to reach out with and help add to that so we can get out of “hanging on” mode and get on with climbing upward, I should have that by the end of the week. We’ve been on a slow build. My end has picked up considerably in the last month and will continue to do so. Now it’s just a question of getting it out there so people can see it.
And as I’m writing this I’m having dozens of notions of things I need to do fly through my head, so let me wrap it up and get back to work!
