23

Continuous quality improvement.

I have about 125k photographs in my digital organizer. Yesterday they resided in 1527 different folders. Today I reduced that to under 850. I still haven't found that one special picture I was looking for, but I did this find this treasure. My daughter got a hole in one on her first ever minigolf game. 2023 will be like that.

Discovery requires courage. It requires patience. It requires that you don’t have a goal, but that you get a sense that the process is good for its own sake. But it does help to put some markers down. Do keep score.

I don’t think The Brothers Karamazov will become my favorite of Dostoyevsky, but I’m enjoying it thus far. I am most impressed with the Elders. Having just finished Ivanhoe the contrast of the authors on the matter of Christian clerics could not be more different. In any case, I’ll probably be reading at least a half-dozen more classics for the first time this year and reconciling my philosophies and observations with their lessons.

This year, as I promise every year, I will do more extra-curricular coding, and working on my serious big idea projects. Instead, however, I’m going to recruit some folks to work with me. I’m aiming to establish at least one garage band and one secret society. I’m also going to start trying to get my interviews off the ground. So some of it will be with my good friend MDZ continuing some of what we were doing in American Wag, but maybe more with a focus on the next wave of IT integration with enterprises who at least understand cloud architecture and SAFe. Yeah I have to learn SAFe and he has to learn blockchain. Good luck to both of us.

I need to cut a new album. With my new piano skills, such as they are I expect that at the very least I can manage some halfway decent chillhop. And I also promise to put up some more chapters of Borky’s Beach. How many of you enjoyed The Rabbit? Raise your hands. Oh. Almost nobody. Oh well.

As I promised, I will do more advice column format. But it also has been presented to me that writers are curious about my writing. So I’ll do more meta about my writing careers. I did almost no music criticism this past year. I thought I would do more. I’ll punt to Ted Gioia.

I also want to answer some freaking hard questions about post-racial black identity. I don’t mind putting myself out there and getting it mostly right but starkly wrong in parts. The problem is that as an example of one… well it’s problematic. This is especially the case because I don’t actually want to put a stake in the ground around any racial position, because all racial context is artificial and wrong. So I need something to swallow race - even though I know the struggle continues. Maybe the answer has everything to do with figuring out the proper context. On the one hand since we’re all Peasants, that has already been handled. On the other hand, Peasant organization may not survive the next evolutions of capital investments / disinvestments. Maybe I need more econ.

I’m also going to do pushups and situps this year. My legs are fine. I’m trying not to care about cardio so much and more about flexibility and basic boxing. Also more fish and soup in the diet. Easier said than affluence permits.

So that gives us some idea about my epistemic skill tracks. Coming up next is closure on ‘What Manner of Black’ series, and introduction of my major theme for the year which is integration of Dark Mountain, sustainability, Long Now and Network State. Stoically of course.

Do your situps. See you next week. Also tell me what you want me to write about.