A month of little learnings, revisited

Dragons, poems, and strong opinions

A month in for Ongoing, I’ve also been using the Substack platform to post bits and pieces, like Instagram and X/Twitter.

Instead of let them all drift off as social posts do, here’s a recap of with added director’s commentary. Lucky/Unlucky you!

[I’m told this won’t post in full via email, so be sure to click through to the full piece to get all the goodness!]

First up, I wonder what other writers and artists want from a social network that’s baked-in to a newsletter platform.

What’s inspiration to some is a distraction for others. The service has potential to build memberships or to dilute them. It could allow for greater engagement or feel like further pressure for people to perform.

A big part of the Notes platform is to celebrate other writers and link to their newsletters.

I’m driven by curiosity, so a post written on a typewriter, with homemade ink-stamps, talking about learning and making new things every day is right up my street! Thanks, Kent Peterson

And with curiosity very much in mind, I offered up a few ways to be curious in the week:

Leaning in to what you know is useful, so long as you leave room to find space to explore areas of interest that you've not considered yet.

My personal balance is to stay in my lane, with the aim to make that lane ever more expansive and easy to work in. If the edges of the lane are just outside my comfort zone, I'll happily work along the edges in the knowledge that I'm never too far away from the safety of the lane I know.

Seems logical to me. Which reminds me:

Maybe we’re all becoming cats…

Next up, a digital drawing one of my kids conjured up when he was messing with new art software. I still love looking at it:

I hope he never loses that curious and confident spirit. He doesn't mind messing about, getting things wrong, starting over, seeing what happens, and working things out with a soft aim of improving as he learns. Inspirational joy!

The inspiration comes from all over the place, so I’ll also be sending out roundup posts of curious stuff I’ve found. For me, it’s a type of “curated thankfulness”:

In previous roles over the years, I've been a keen curator. Back in the mid- to late-2000s, I often needed to explain to people what a curator was. Today, the term seems more widely known and accepted, which has its pros and cons.

But I know curation still has a huge amount of use to both the curator and the consumer. That’s why so many email newsletters have roundup posts like it. I’m more than happy to jump on that bandwagon.

If you want to do your own roundup posts, be sure to get the lowdown from Russell Nohelty with all the juicy deets and advice!

I sent some poetry at the beginning of March. There will be more, often with some sort of curious angle.

I’m posting them up on Substack Notes too, like this one:

Yes, I’m very much into contradiction. 😁

I’m also into art and doodles as the next couple of posts will attest:

One evening, I threw together a few bits that were on my desk. From random fragments a story appears! A Post-It with a doodle, which I deliberately ripped; a magnet thing that my son left next to me; a small detail from the cover of a magazine; and a little area of my desk on the right.

Art and ideas can take years to develop, or they can arrive in seconds. Magic is everywhere, in multiple ways, and many different stages. And this, in essence, sums up much of the piece I photographed.

I also drew a dragon for something. Again, just a few minutes, but a completely different inspiration and approach:

By now, you can see all sorts of directions available when working with curiosity. And when I saw this newsletter could have topics listed for it, I had to put my thinking cap on…

The philosophy and technology angle was to signify past and future, with the culture of now in the middle.

I like how the cultural element grounds everything, but isn’t a topic in its own right. Sound like a method to my madness?

If I could pick a third topic, culture would certainly be it!

But Substack allows two subject areas to list, and we roll with that. Which brings us full-circle, back to another meta post about Substack itself:

Some people love these meta pieces, while others are getting frustrated.

So I went for tongue-in-cheek, but still giving the overarching points from the many pieces I read. That’s what I call balance!

And that’s that! What do you think of little note compilations like this? Are you using these yourself, or do you have another social platform of choice?