blog: essays, observations & weeknotes
- technology & society
on AI saving us work we never wanted to do, and how easily that becomes work we really ought to do ourselves...
- arts & culture
on a childhood Afrikaans saying, a thwarted animal wedding, and the stories people tell when sunshine and rain arrive together
- weeknotes
on making my website more useful, finding joy in tracking reading moments, and negotiating with a body that's having none of it.
- website & development
on letting Eleventy handle the layouts and Quartz the connected notes, then doing the fiddly work of making them feel like one website.
- technology & society
on how AI voice cloning lets someone borrow the trust you’ve earned—and put it behind words you never said.
- weeknotes
on returning to weeknotes, rebuilding my online home, and leaving enough room in the week for books, coloured lights, and doing less.
- arts & culture
on eating my way around the world, finding a favourite in every country, and ordering it as though nothing else exists.
- arts & culture
on Vincent van Gogh, the art market, the tortured artist myth, and supporting living artists.
- arts & culture
on Digger, dark humour, fossil fuels, and finding resilience in the face of an ending.
- writing & publishing
on the page as an anchor for identity, creativity, reading, and making sense of being human.
- books & reading
hosting October’s IndieWeb Book Club with Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built, a short read exploring hopepunk, solarpunk, and what people need.
- creativity & creative practice
on creative DNA, recovering from burnout, and Twyla Tharp’s 33 questions for a creative autobiography.
- arts & culture
on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the heartache woven into its history, and its unexpected influence on music from Chopin to The Beatles.
- mind & meaning
on reframing pathological demand avoidance as a profound demand for autonomy, agency, and neuroaffirmative self-determination.
- nature & environment
on October across hemispheres, C. Louis Leipoldt’s ‘Oktobermaand,’ and an English translation of a South African spring poem.
- nature & environment
on weather talk as social glue, a grounding in natural forces, and why the last refuge of the unimaginative is anything but.
- books & reading
on ergodic appetites, bedtime fiction, and why for a recovering perfectionist the easy things are the hard ones.
- writing & publishing
on reclaiming a personal website, embracing imperfection, and attempting 100 posts in 13 weeks.
- mind & meaning
on perfectionism as a mind virus, and the rebellion that followed Long COVID.
- mind & meaning
on the Nadjeid, the Judgement of Ego, and rebelling against the workaholic bargain of eventual absolution.
- relationships & family
on parenting as duty, identity, reciprocal healing, and the lifelong work of raising ourselves.
- books & reading
on experimental literature, recovering from perfectionism, and why the easier reading experience can sometimes be the better choice.
- arts & culture
how music activates memory, reconnects us with earlier selves, and creates portals across time, distance, and loss.