It's summer, and I find myself with some downtime, which usually means overthinking.

Work

Nearly a year ago I observed the 20th anniversary of my day job. Neat! And then several months later my position was eliminated in a gigantic re-org. I was given some time to find a new position in the company, but after 20 years and with the support of good friends and loved ones, I decided to just exit.

So I'm in the middle of a gap year I feel exceptionally fortunate to be able to take. It is...a very strange feeling sometimes.

I've been spending my time catching up with the state of web development outside of the silo of a Big Tech Company. There is so much cool stuff happening in the front-end space these days and I've been having fun working on personal projects and reconnecting with the work that drew me to the web in the first place.

Whatever my next career move might be, I'm aiming for something with a little more autonomy. Self-employed? I used to think I didn't have the knack for that, but these days I'm feeling the curiousity and confidence to figure it out. It also helps to have had, uh, a quarter-century of experience building stuff.

Also, the tech interviewing space has become broken and gross, and I say that as someone who's been on both sides of the process.

Music

There is no music! Since the release of the Car Trouble album and the handful of follow-up singles, I haven't written squat. There are some unreleased cover songs I recorded with Nelson and Craig over a year ago, but I really dislike my vocal performance on those and I think I'd have to fundamentally change the nature of my voice to be satisfied.

I also have the remnants of a follow-up Car Trouble EP, maybe about four new songs, scattered about. I'd like to finish those someday. But honestly, my songwriting neurons are thoroughly fried, and I'm being pulled more and more toward comics, which don't require me to go anywhere, lug gear around, or stay out past 1 A.M. to get my bass rig that I loaned to the other bands back.

On the bright side, I've been playing bass a lot and I'm very, very good now.

I do fantasize about finding a perfect gig on Craigslist, which at this point would be an all-middle-aged Phil Collins tribute.

Comics

I've been doing more comics than ever and you should join my newsletter!

Here's why: subscribers are getting a lot more stuff than what I post of the website. They're getting extra comics, one-panel gag comics, peeks at animation projects I'm working on, and access to a hidden blog. They also get to see comics at least a week before everyone else.

Here's another reason: social media is a lousy way to distribute comics, or any other art. You know this. I know this. Everyone knows this. It's true that algorithms hide content people actually want to see. But also? Thanks to all the noise created by AI-generated trash, policital jerks, and ads ads ads, people are just tuning out social media.

If you like an artist's work, you really should try to follow them off of social media, even if you're not ready to give them money. Go find a few artists you love and show them that love: sign up for newsletters, share links to their work, bookmark their websites, or just tell someone else!

Animation!

I am turning a small number of Neat Hobby! comics into animated shorts! I'm learning to do this through Clip Studio Paint's built-in animation tools. I haven't posted anything public yet (which is why you should join the newsletter! ) but if you subscribe to my YouTube channel you'll see them the moment they go up.

This is by far the most fun and satisfying thing I'm working on. The perfect intersection of my interests: drawing, music, voice acting, video. I want to do 8-10 of these by the end of 2024.

AI

I try to keep an open mind about it, but AI really does look like a bubble that's gonna pop before it can produce anything of broad value. That's okay, we did that with the dotcom stuff too.

Big Tech Companies had a nice sprint during Covid, but now that's over, innovation has plateaued and they're out of ideas. But because constant growth is the expectation, we get layoffs, more ads, price hikes, and Hail Mary attempts to shove AI into things that worked perfectly well without it.

Which sucks, because I actually think there's some real utility! I have a short list of things I'd want AI to do for me personally, and none of them should require god-level intelligence or a dedicated power grid.

That Thing in November

I don't even know why this is a question! But if there's any doubt, here's a handy rubric:

• How did you feel when the US Supreme Court threw out Roe?
• How did you feel as you watched January 6 happen in real time?
• Do you want more of that?

There's your answer!