March 21, 2022
Today is very very beautiful. I woke up at 7:45, went for a jog and then read for like 3 hours. It was so nice. I finished the smoking book yesterday. I smoked my last joint. I feel so happy and free. I’m so excited. I realized that I haven’t been drug free since I was like 16. Even though there were long periods where I didn’t smoke weed, I was still allowing myself to do it if I wanted to. It was just because I hated being high that I didn’t smoke. Now it’s totally off the table, which is a different thing. I was lying in bed the other day and remembering just how sure I was that I didn’t like weed. It wasn’t a problem at all for a while. I was never tempted to do it, I think maybe because I had alcohol? This is why the website really excites me. I’ll be able to go back in my life so much easier and see what I was thinking, feeling making, at any given point! It’s crazy because I can see so many steps down the line, but I can’t physically implement them yet because web design is still so new to me, and I’m also really reluctant to show it to too many people, especially someone who knows how to program. It just seems like such an amazing idea for a piece of software that I can’t believe it doesn’t exist yet. Every single day I wake up nervous that someone else is going to come out with the exact same idea.
Just to re-iterate, the grand vision as of today is a system that stores all of your photos, videos, documents, songs, in a cloud based storage system organized by date. This cloud platform is tightly connected to a ‘front-end’ version that displays all of the content in a simple and pleasant way, while also being sorted by date. There will also be an ‘add-on’ app designed for smartphones that uses the ‘rag’ method of placing photos into grids. As you’re taking photos on your phone, the photos are automatically being placed in the ‘rag’ to create new art pieces, which are then saved and displayed on the website. Anything you make can go through the rag. Some people may not want to use it, as its only real purpose is to take what you’ve made and turn it into a collage. It ‘artifies’ your photos for you.
I’m also very interested in putting music and videos through the rag. I’m also curios about seeing what music ‘looks’ like, or what a photo ‘sounds’ like. I’ve realized you can do this, so long as you determine the coordinates, I think. You could make it so that when someone plays the drums, or any instrument for that matter, it would translate instantly to colours. You could also have it so that as someone is painting a picture, the pressure of the brush strokes, as well as the colour, could be translated to sounds.
You could also translate these things to a haptic engine, like the little motors in cell phones. I really want to get to a point where enough of these things are combined that they just become a single thing. You no longer distinguish between the image, sound, smell, feeling. It’s just one vibration. You almost don’t need to be putting people into virtual reality through headsets. You just need to put them in a room, either lying down or floating in a pool of water, and then project all the different things (sound, visuals, etc.) but have them all operating on the same coordinates, so they’re all exact representations of one another.
Right now Tyler and Brenya are upstairs chatting. Carter’s at work I think. Brenya is here today, working. I always notice how much better I feel when there’s a woman in the house, or even at work. I don’t quite know why, but I can just feel that I’m much more calm. I also don’t feel nearly as much ‘FOMO’. I feel quite content to be at home working on whatever I’m working on, whereas normally I often feel a slight twinge of guilt that I’m not doing something out of the house, around other people.
I want to start going to these open-mic things for musicians. I feel a bit nervous, although I’m sure that’ll go away literally the second I step out the door and just start heading down town. Leaving the house is always the hardest part. I always find it so funny how much better I feel once I’m walking. Dates are a little different. I tend to stay nervous with dates right up until I’m finally face-to-face with the person. At that point I tend to relax a lot.
I’ve also been thinking about my magic number ‘4’, and how it seems to be on the fourth time that things begin to become easy. I was thinking about this because I really have felt a difference in my demeanour at work. I’ve felt so much more relaxed and willing to be myself around customers. I realized that this is my fourth year of doing that. I’ve been there for 5 years, but a year of that was gone due to Covid. So it seems to take roughly 3 times of doing something to get comfortable. The fourth time is when it becomes slightly automatic, which allows room for creativity.
And so I was thinking that based on this, whatever brand new thing I start right now, I will be 27 when it becomes slightly automatic. I’ve worked roughly 3 days a week at the Fox since I started. So if I do something roughly 3 days a week for the next 3 years, I’ll begin to get truly comfortable with it at the beginning of the fourth yeatr. One thing I’ve just started is web design. I’ve been doing that consistently, almost every day, for the past 3 months. If I continue to do so for the next 33 months, I should start to get very comfortable!
It’s even better for things that I’ve already started, like writing almost everyday. I’ve been doing that nearly every day for almost 2 years! Time sure seems to go fast when you stop to think about it.
I’m trynna decide how to go about organizing the back-end of the website and all my files. Should I start with year (1999-present) and within each year have four folders marked ‘writing’ ‘music’ ‘photos’ ‘videos’, or should I have these 4 folders be the first thing you see, and within each folder you have the years.
Having it all sorted by year is more in line with the website, but I feel that the back ends purpose is slightly different. Whereas with the website the date is always king, with the website organization and ease of access is king. I should decide sooner than later. I like the idea of having the 4 categories first just because of how simple it looks. I don’t actually know if one is easier to locate files, but the fact that the first step is less intimating might help in a psychological way. The problem of course, is what if I make something that doesn’t fit into any of those 4 categories. The whole system is being built on the premise that everything I will ever make will fit within those 4 categories. I guess I can always introduce a new category if I need to. I guess one nice thing about having categories first is that you know that each folder only has exactly what it says, versus when you start with year, you know that it contains all sorts of stuff. I like that for the front end of the website, but for the backend I think I prefer things starting in categories.