the secret life of fruitkid

"Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for w...

Every so often, I decide to refresh my systems for getting work done. I've never really settled on any one routine for very long; I guess I just like to shake things up sometimes. It's totally a form of procrastination, but at least it's one that gets me excited about working again after a hiatus or a depressive funk or whatever. Writing out my process helps me untangle my thoughts and start moving forward again. I was originally just writing this out for my own benefit, but then I thought it m...

Two days ago I wasn't feeling great. I hadn't done any chores, or much of anything, really (thanks, depression) and my partner had washed some clothes. They asked if I would go get the wet laundry to hang it outside, and I said yes. I didn't want to, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, I was feeling judgmental and accusatory, silently and instantly critical of anything my partner said or did. It was pre-conscious, it seemed. My partner told me they had left the laundry bag on t...

Bandcamp page here. Ambient synth music that's simultaneously otherworldly and grounding. Excellent for reading and writing. ...

I don't even know if this is going to make sense, but I had to share it somewhere. So, something compelled me to listen to Frou Frou's album Details a few minutes ago and I was mentally/emotionally transported to 2008-2009, when I was most into that album. At the same time, I was also texting with my good friend to check in about how we were each doing in our self-isolation bubbles -- a friend who was especially close to me in 2008-2009. She responded with a picture of her partner standing n...

I'm an aspiring/nascent computer nerd, and I'd like to do more tinkering with hardware and software. Here's a list-in-progress of projects I'd like to try: **Soon** - set up a Glitch account and start exploring the apps - run Linux Beta on my Chromebook and explore what I can do with that **In 2020** - do Mozilla's digital detox - start reducing my presence under the Googlesphere - DIY replacement of the fried logic board in my 2011 MacBook Pro (and reinstallation of its hard drive) - pi...

Hoo boy, here I am having all kinds of personal revelations. Funny how that happens when I really, truly need to be focusing on something else... As a kind of addendum to my Day 8 post, which was about my procrastination problems stemming from my need for chaos ~slash~ fear of the remotest disapproval, I just had the thought that I get a perverse kind of energy from putting myself through an ordeal (such as, for instance, staying up all night telling myself I will spend the night working on my ...

Reflecting as I run out the door after an all-nighter spent not working, but dreading and avoiding work that has to be presented later today: what if what’s needed (in my case, which is chronically procrastinating on writing projects) isn’t accountability, but a sense of shared joy? I have a shared folder with a friend to which we’ve endeavored to contribute two pages per day. Both of us have fallen short of that ideal by quite a bit, and this morning I briefly found myself wishing that she and...

I have a couple of ideas for longer posts, but they're both on the heavier side. Since I'm not feeling very up to going deep into my feelings today, I'll give a little update on "Hallelujah." Slow and steady progress! So far, I've: figured out the main fingerpicking pattern and chord progression for everything except the bridge transcribed the main guitar part into musical notation (both for future reference and to strengthen my music-reading muscles) practiced playing and singing the lyrics ...

I think my procrastination problem may be my way of manufacturing crises for myself. I grew up in an alcoholic/dysfunctional family, and I've been coming to terms with that in a deeper way in recent weeks. Important note: I feel it necessary to add the caveat here that alcoholic/dysfunctional families come in many shapes, sizes, and flavors, and that calling a family alcoholic/dysfunctional does not mean that the people in it are necessarily bad, or that the dynamic itself is bad. Rather, it's ...

I just discovered this news site committed to academically rigorous, evidence-based journalism. I haven't really investigated it yet, but I'm intrigued by their description. Hoping it can be of use, perhaps even while I'm visiting family this week. https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are ...

For a long time, I've admired people who aren't afraid to be seen and heard. I have wanted to be the kind of person who can put their ideas and creations out into the world. The problem is that as much as I want to do those things too, I'm extremely afraid. One possible way around it is to conceive of my creations as gifts to people I love. Right now, I'm working on covering the song "Hallelujah," recently released by the band Haim (it's not another version of the Leonard Cohen song). Instead, ...

As promised yesterday, and in the hopes that thinking about my writing process will help me jump into writing mode, I wanted to explain how I go from notes to writing. Historically, this has been the most difficult part of writing for me--that is to say, I'm fine at taking notes on texts, but the act of getting started coming up with my own ideas about them is supremely challenging. But I've had some luck with a process like the following: When I read a source, I take notes by hand, in a smalli...

tl;dr: The Zettelkasten method is mostly not for me, but I like the part that forces you to synthesize different ideas in your own words and make connections to other ideas at the level of the note. This is something I will incorporate as an intermediate step between collecting information from a text and writing in a project (more on that in part 2 tomorrow!). Yesterday, I engaged in some excellent "productive" (read: not really productive at all) procrastination. I went down the rabbit hole...

I have a confession to make—okay, it's probably not much of a confession, since lots of bloggers seem to start out with a similar idea; that is, lots of writers struggle with a similar problem. Here's the confession: I have made a terrible habit of procrastinating. One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get into the habit of putting words on the page every day. My history with procrastination is long and storied. It is the stuff of legend, truly. (Maybe someday I'll tell you the who...

Today I watched Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro for the first time with my partner and a couple of friends. It really was as enchanting as everyone seems to say it is. Every single frame was composed beautifully—flawlessly, I'd say—all while making it look effortless. I love that the camera would linger in certain moments, too, like when main characters Mei and Satsuki were taking in their new home for the first time. I really appreciated the slowness of it. And of course it was incredibly...

It varies from day to day, but the sounds I consistently return to while writing are usually ambient(ish) in nature. For the past few months, I've been coming back to the album wander into by ann annie (you can find it on bandcamp). It's got enough motion to keep me interested and engaged, and enough space to get lost with. ann annie is one of my favorite artists working with modular synthesizers. To my ears, modular synthesis often tends toward the loud and grating. While that's compelling an...

Man, I'm jazzed about this. Listed feels so old-school, in a really good way. I love the anonymity of it, the seemingly hodgepodge community of writers (I've already learned things from you!), the utter lack of metrics, the feeling of being off in a safe little corner where few are paying attention. It's been an insomnia kind of night, so I'm going to try to sleep now and begin the 100 day writing challenge when I wake up. Maybe I'll have a dream to regale you with. If you're reading this, tha...