So uh, hi. Been a week, eh? I feel like I could open every newsletter with that statement these days; every week Something New Happens. Things are really ramping up! Personally I’m really interested in everything happening in Nepal over the social media ban and subsequent “Gen Z Riots”. I also think a lot about South Korea’s response to the declaration of martial law in late 2024. I need to follow up on current movements in Brazil, too. Just, you know, interesting to see how different countries and cultures respond to such things! Intellectually speaking.

I’ve been pretty nose-down in my work this week, so it was a good week to be less present on social media anyway I guess. Point in favour of actually focusing on work, I guess? But when you’re in “entertainment”—which I think most content creators are even if we don’t call ourselves entertainers—being extremely Present on socials is part of the job. I go back and forth on that a lot, both in how to do it as well as, uh, actually doing it. This week, not so much. Except to talk about the moon.

I went out to a dungeon synth show last night, New Fantasies for Old Churches, and it was a very fun, very chill time. I love dungeon synth because it’s the perfect intersection of metal and nerdery. I love the community because by and large, we’ve all been social rejects (complimentary) at some point in our lives, so that makes any DS event incredibly welcoming while not taking itself nor ourselves too seriously. Looking around you’d think half the audience came directly from a ren faire, with plenty of chainmaille and rogue wear and wizardly cloaks mixed in among the battle vests and 3-sided band tees. We need more frivolity like that right now, methinks.

☑️ Done and Done - As Rihanna once said, work work work work work. I did end up taking one day off to go outside and touch ornamental grasses at the local Chinese gardens. Scheduled Irma’s next labs/vaccines for early Oct due to the vet being out until the end of the month. Had a good long walk with her on one of the muggier afternoons. Trimmed a couple scraggly inches off my hair (it’s still very long). Zoned out on clips of castles and dragons while a man in sunglasses and chainmaille played synth music.

📋 Coming up - If everything goes well, I’ll be camming again by the end of the week (more thoughts on this in a future email; but in the meantime watch my Bluesky for announcements). I also plan to attend this listening party for the new Igorrr album. I didn’t get out to work in a coffee shop last week, but maybe as a treat this week?

Blood Moon, baby!! Sounds more ominous than it is, and this lunation is a personal favourite simply due to its signaling a shift in seasons. But also, to have it align as a lunar eclipse in my Sun sign of Pisces feels like an important thing. In as much as I use the full and new moons to help me set a schedule for just holding a general journaling practice, it is also a form of magick; I don’t think it’s possible to align one’s action with the lunar cycles without it becoming a mystic experience. But, you do you.

I haven’t revisted any older journal entries for a while, so doing so last week in advance of the full moon felt good. It’s interesting to consider where I was mentally last year and what my goals were, compared to where I am this year. Have I hit my goals in that time? Absolutely not; I’m a notorious goal post mover. But at the same time, I feel like the work I have done has been very valuable.

Has that work wrought any visible change to my life? Not at all. 😂 If anything, I feel like the past year I wasn’t building up from the foundation, but building the foundation itself, and the years prior were actually excavation work. Just how deep does the psyche go?? Pretty deep, as it turns out; plenty of room for some sub-levels to be constructed, which is perhaps why it’s taken me so long to get back to building above-ground.

While I maybe haven’t achieved specific milestones I had set for myself, the work I have been doing is still in service of those goals. Who am I to say how things should be done? How would I know the best way to do something that I’ve never done before? Maybe some of those goals don’t even serve me at this point. Maybe my goals do keep changing, maybe those goalposts do get pushed back, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still moving forward. Last I checked, there was no hard deadline set. If what I seek aligns with what I need, it’ll happen.

Last Sunday, I told you that I’d be taking a more structured approach to my work that week. “Assess on Monday, Assemble on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Action for the remainder of the week.” So did it work? Yes and… not really. But yes!

I started with a fairly structured outline for myself with each day assigned a focus: available content review (stuff I’ve shot but not posted), editing, then scheduling to fansites with matching social promo, with a bit of dabbling in new projects to break things up. The idea was to pace the workload in a way that would keep me moving steadily, building upon the previous day and setting up for an easier time the next. On paper, it looked like a logical division of tasks across the week, and I felt confident going in with a clear picture of what I wanted to accomplish. And spending Monday deep in the thought work portion of the week definitely helped me identify exactly what I needed to do, with a rough outline to the structure of each task.

But as the week progressed, I found myself leaning less on the daily “assignments” and more on the larger goal that was driving the week. Instead of neatly dividing each day into its planned tasks/subfocus, I ended up with a more holistic, blended approach to most days. If editing made more sense in the moment, that’s where I put my time; if it was easier to keep my focus flowing by immediately going to schedule content after editing, that’s what I did, regardless of what the plan said. It wasn’t the rigid framework I designed, but it kept me moving in the right direction without getting bogged down by second-guessing whether I was “on track” with the original calendar.

The result was that I scheduled nearly all of my fansite content for the month, built out a preliminary plan for promotions, and even had the bandwidth to make progress on my side project (oookay so maybe I actually got a little overly sidetracked by it a couple times, but I didn’t stress about that because I knew I was still keeping pace with my week). Most importantly, I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Usually, weeks with this much time-sensitive work leave me drained or scattered but instead, I felt focused, intentional. I was even able to step back for a day for some unplanned and guilt-free social time.

What stood out the most was how the flexibility of my execution actually amplified my productivity. By not forcing myself to follow the plan too rigidly, I gave myself permission to adapt to my energy and circumstances while still staying in sync with my priorities. This also gave me the opportunity to better understand my workflow and energy patterns, to consider: if a rigid structure doesn’t help me, what does? I ended the week with all major pieces in place, but none of the pressure of trying to make each day look exactly like the plan I had written down.

Also, like, I do feel like I keep creating “batch work” expectations for myself even though those never pan out. Sometimes I do great with batch work (bundling a bunch of similar tasks together, to optimize focus on the type of work instead of the individual project) but more often than not I end up feeling creatively restrained and then I get nothing done. So I also learned/reminded myself that I need to stop doing that lol.

And yes, I also ended the week with a few posts left un-queued, one of which is a larger photo set I still need to finish editing, and I did next to no promotional scheduling—tbh I think that endeavor is going to need its own week. 😅 But the approach and the structure are what’s valuable… defining the scope of the week and highlighting key steps, with a loose order of operations to reference if I start to feel too lost. Planning a focused week like this was meant to be a framework, not a cage.

That balance of strategy and adaptability is what let me wrap things up feeling both satisfied with what I accomplished and optimistic about the next round. Now that I have this experience and a loose framework in place, this will absolutely become a monthly routine for me. I’ve already got “Content Week” on my calendar for two weeks from now, so I can start my October off on the right (spooky) foot, and have a stress-free Octoberween. 👻

🎵 Listening - Will wonders ever cease?? I finially caught up on my ever-growing tab group of Bandcamps to listen to, either new releases or stuff from my wishlist I wanted to revisit or random albums that came through the explore page. Now I can live in my iTunes for a bit, listening to the music I actually bought/downloaded over recent months and building playlists.

📺 Watching - It was another Star Trek-heavy week! I wrapped up Discovery season 3 with my friend (one of my fave eps of Disco tbh, just because of the way everything happens at the last possible milisecond yay the good guys win), and then later that same day watched the season 3 finale of Strange New Worlds (my immediate thought: damn. DAMN. Oof. Okay. Also did… did Pelia make a Doctor Who reference…?) ((Also also this “critic” opining that SNW is lazy because nobody’s queer enough and Spock shouldn’t have girlfriends because “what if?” has been annoying me for weeks.))

👕 Wearing - I was quite delighted this past week to actually be back to wearing tshirts on the reg!! I mostly live in tank tops during the summer heat, but really I’m an oversized tshirt girly at heart and the big tshirt cozy vibes are just… ahhh. This means that leather jacket season is riiiiight around the corner!

👾 Gaming - Not quite a “game” per se but definitely gamified, I booted up Spirit City: Lofi Sessions on my most productive day last week; coincidence?? Spirit City is basically a lofi cartoon body-doubling experience with tons of customization around the space and activities of your avatar, as well as the ambient soundscape—now with everyone’s favourite Lofi Girl music integrated! I basically recreated me/my loft because it makes me want to clean and get the place looking ~aesthetic~ you know?!

🎺 As a former band kid I totally get it: this retired accountant went back to college so he could march sousaphone in one of his dream bands. Yes Kent live your dream! Toot your big horn!! Have fun with it! Tbh I’ve considered going back to school at some point in my life, but had not considered getting my flute refurbished about it.

💯 Gretchen Felker-Martin has had some of the spiciest and most delicious hot takes this week, and unfortunately(?) they cost her at least one writing gig, with DC Comics. And I say “(?)” because like, boo hoo; as I saw someone point out, really she was a get for THEM, not the other way around. She also got banned from Bluesky for her comments which is very problematic to say the least. (If you feel inquisitive about content moderation responses to social media posts after an… Event… I'd recommend reading through and considering this thread from @raheili.bsky.social.) Anyway you should buy her book, Manhunt.

🙄 I’m tired grandpa:

🐉 What do you call the 3D printing equivalent of AI slop? Apparently, “slop” still applies, tho “junk” also works. This 12-minute video explores “the epidemic of 3D printed junk” and as someone with no hats in the game, I appreciated the insights into not just the process but also the cost of operating a printing farm(?! ew.) as well as a touch of history. (Source: Kory Bing on bsky; I too am really tired of seeing those damn dragons, at ren faires.)

🕵️‍♂️ It’s never a bad time to revisit your infosec practices as a common citizen. I liked this Wired guide to protecting yourself from surveillance, published June this year. Just remember that the best prevention to digital surveillance is building in-person communities and speaking to your peers and neighbours face-to-face!!

It feels like this last quarter-ish of 2025 is speeding hastily toward a close. Next thing you know, I’ll be talking about Chri—you know what, I’m not even going to say it.

Friendly reminder that none of this is normal, and it’s totally valid to feel like staying in and being cozy and nesting. But also the darker, wetter months are coming and that will be the time to nest and eat and for now, while the sun is out and the days are still warm, we should keep going outside and keep meeting our friends and looking at all the flora and fauna who have no idea what a calendar is; they simply know when it’s time.

Cheers to whatever helps you find your weird this week. Be safe out there.

xox,