Forever Passer-By’s Digital Garden

I tend to have more ideas than most, and this is how I do it: the secret is combining other ideas in unlikely and novel ways. Only rarely is a new idea or creation truly new, usually it’s an understandable next step in a logical chain or a combination of existing ideas in a fun, exciting way. Here’s a simple, easy to learn, repeatable process that I use to come up with new, unique, and creative ideas as often as I wish.

My Creative Process

1. Find something I either agree with and want to build upon, or disagree with and want to articulate why.
2. Rough out the points I want to make and make sure they’re valid, well reasoned, and something I can articulate
3. Determine how I want to express my points and how the work will be published; perhaps as a comment response, article or essay, homework to be turned in, or visually. Any format is fair game, what I’m looking for is an overlap between my audience, the publishing platform, and a structure that makes sense for both of those. I’ve noticed people have favorite ways they prefer to publish, and they usually keep to a method once they find it, while I have a tendency to always want to try something new.
4. Combine two or three other ideas to create either a metaphor for a written work or a visual style for a visual work, or a combination of the two. I have a list below of some ideas to start with. Rough out a draft of the written work with penang paper, or a few sketches of the visual work to build up the layout.

Once we’re this far along, the creative work is largely done. Next comes drafts and troubleshooting, which are a process of their own, but are not as mentally difficult as generating the idea.

List of Ideas to Spark Creativity

• Books, websites, articles, and essays, and my disagreement or thoughts that build upon their thoughts
• Current events and the news (careful, news is a highly toxic cognitohazard, limit your exposure
• Fine art: oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, architecture
• Folk art, handcrafts, toys, graffiti, vandalism
• Place: Urban, suburban, rural, wild lands, waste lands
• Film styles, black & white/technicolor/current, and the theatre
• Newspapers/magazines/catalogs/letters
• Books, ancient/old/new and maps, poetry
• Video games/pixel art/text art
• Existing genres and styles like dark academia, cottagecore, etc.
• Plants/animals/minerals/the natural world
• Coins, antiques, and ephemera
• Fiber arts, embroidery and lace, patterns, garments, adornments
• Science, mathematics, and technology, instruments of study
• Time: hours, days, seasons, eons
• Exploration: new lands, cryptids, terra incognita, hostile peoples and lands
• War and apocalypse, cataclysms: flood, fire, earthquake, wind, dust storms
• Spiritual and mythological imagery, the afterlife, wheel of fate Horror and darkness, monsters, temptation and corruption, the abyss Utopia and dystopia, tyranny, republic, monarchy, brigands, justice and the law

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I’m trying to learn Latin, and I struggle with getting enough repetitions to learn, and also retaining all the new vocabulary and grammar. I’ve tried the “Anki” spaced repetition flashcard app previously and spent too much time trying to figure out how it works, but I got poor results since I didn’t enjoy the spaced repetition aspect of the software. I couldn’t keep with it. What I would prefer is to drill flashcards at will.

I found a post by another learner, and the post says that the Anki will allow you to change the spaced repetition aspect by deck (which is the upper-level of flashcard organization in the app.) The writer proposes that, instead of organizing the card decks by subject, they should be organized by how you want the spacing to occur. He says that you should divide your decks into an “active” deck that you are using for the spaced repetition algorithm, and an “inactive” deck that doesn’t have a spaced repetition algorithm.

Building on that idea, I think creating three decks, “Spaced Repetition," “Drills,” and “Inactive” might be a good way to make the Anki app more enjoyable.

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With my new replacement phone, I’m now accessing YouTube without my normal login, and so I’m receiving recommendations without regard to my actual interests. I’ve made the grim mistake of watching some “dating advice” videos, and my algorithm leads me to believe the situation is dire out there.

One of the videos was of a woman recounting her heartbreak from casual dating, and I couldn’t help but think with gratitude on how I was raised, and how the adults around me were so concerned with helping me avoid bad relationships. It saddens me to see so many broken hearts, broken families, and such mistrust between two sexes that were born to be each other’s warm hearth and shelter in a ruthless world.

I can’t help but think there’s a way to create a process, or a flow chart, of a dating strategy that would give women (I wouldn’t dare create such a thing for the men, as I lack the life experience and credentials to do so) a set of guidelines to help them find their way to love, a passionate marriage, and a flourishing family. I can’t help but think the conflict between the sexes is an artifact of a lot of poorly advised experiences where there was vulnerability, hurt feelings, and a lack of understanding between two fundamentally decent people, and I think a set of guidelines would be helpful in recognizing when the relationship is on or off track.

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I've noticed my ability to focus has degraded over time, I’m more easily annoyed, distracted, frustrated, and bored. I suspect this is due to having excessive exposure to unnecessary, unhelpful, or downright harmful information. If my meals were as unhealthy as my information diet, I would be a cast member on “My 600 lb. Life.”

“Seizing the means of cognition” is about rescuing my ability to focus and concentrate from a hostile information environment. As I notice that something associated with screens is causing a problem, I plan to write about it and how I went about solving it. The first item on my list is the screen itself.

I remember reading an article about an incredibly popular children’s show “Cocomelon,” and how the show was designed to captivate children—literally. The creators of the show would hold focus groups where children were exposed to the show, and every time a child looked away from the screen, the show was changed to keep the children staring at the screen for as long as possible. The show runners were quite proud of their cleverness at mesmerizing children, as I recall, there was not a moment of self-reflection, or concern that this might be a bad idea. As time has passed, and more stories and videos about “iPad kids” and screen-addicted toddlers appear, it’s becoming more apparent that screens in and of themselves are harmful.

I suspect this isn’t a new phenomenon, but I would go even further than blaming mobile devices for screen addiction, I would blame the screen itself. There has been social commentary since the introduction of the television decrying the TV as a stupefying agent. They would use rude terms to insult the TV like “the boob tube” or “the electric jew.” I recall seeing adults in my youth staring at the screen with total concentration. They would stare in such stillness it was unnerving, and if you interrupted some of them, they would become angry or annoyed to an unreasonable degree. It wasn’t just the adults, my peers were also quickly sedated and pacified by screens. I think the only reason my generation wasn’t addicted as the current generation, is due to the inconvenience to our parents of sitting inside watching TV all day. It was far more common for parents to force their kids outside to play in those days.

This puts me in something of a pickle. Screens are important for work, especially mobile devices, which are required for phone calls, messages, navigation, and two-factor authentication. Screens are also required for my work. Shoot, even this website requires a screen. I can’t just jettison every screen from my life. I have to find a way to keep the screens, but still preserve my mental faculties.

Upon reflection, there are a couple strategies I could use, which are: avoidance: while I can’t avoid all screens, I can favor places without screens purposefulness: I could focus on only using screened for purposeful activity (I’m not sure how to do this, I’m concerned this will rely on my self-discipline, which experience has shown me is a very poor plan.)

I’m not sure what would help at this point. I think some reflection is in order. I’ll see if I can come up with any other ideas.

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I found a free, easy way to set up a distraction-free writing environment using Google Docs that’s also kind to my eyes. Here’s how I set it up:

• First, create a new Google Doc, and title it however you prefer. The distraction-free component is available by turning on some settings as follows: Select “File” > “Page Setup” > the “Pageless” tab > then select whatever color for the background color that you prefer. I selected “Dull Black #222222,” since I prefer a dark background.
• Select “View” > “Show Ruler;” deselect the ruler and it should immediately disappear.
• Select “View” > “Text Width;” select whatever view makes sense for your screen size. I selected “Narrow” since I prefer a narrower column when writing. Select “View” > “Full Screen;” this will immediately remove all Google Doc menus from your browser. You can return the menus to the screen by pressing Escape.
• Press the “F11” key on your keyboard, or use your browser’s menu to enter “Full Screen Mode” or your browser’s equivalent. This will remove all menus from your browser. To return the browser menus, press F11 again.

Now you have a distraction-free writing environment for free with critical Google Docs functionality, such as auto-save. I made the writing environment easier on my eyes by using the following settings:

• Background color of “Dull Black” (#222222)
• Font color of “Burnt Orange” (#BE5103)
• Font of “Roboto Medium”
• Font size of 16.
• Custom line spacing of 1.3. You can edit line spacing via “Format” > “Line & paragraph spacing” > “Custom spacing” > “Line spacing:” 1.3

I prefer using Google Docs as part of my writing process since it offers spelling and grammar checking, as well as an auto-compete feature which handily lets you know if what you’re writing is becoming predictable and uninteresting. (If what I plan to write is proposed by auto-complete, then I know I need to change my syntax.) Google Docs also automatically uses “smart quotes,” which are difficult to add manually in a text program.

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