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February 15, 2025

This is my first update to maxwrites since I figured out how to publish Obsidian to the web a few weeks ago. I haven't done much to it (I've mostly been going through the motions lately) but I did start consolidating the quotes I've gotten from various books read into topic pages which I will eventually expand upon. Lots to come!

Listening to: My NAS Plex library is scanning and trying its hardest to get all my media to me for my walk later today.

What I've been doing with websites:

• Described above for maxwrites. I'm still building this out but increasingly getting a better idea of how I want my digital garden to flow and present information. I need to add some kind of feedback mechanism so people can correct me, if they want to. It's scary to potentially be so publicly wrong about things but I think it's good for the learning process to share progress.
• Since I got the NAS yesterday, I started moving media from a different (ancient) external drive and I found a whole folder full of old website designs! I spent some time this morning looking at them and dang I made some unique and nice-looking sites. I am looking forward to recycling some of them for present-day sites.

What's going on creatively:

• Ahhh not much actually. I did manage to upload more zines to my Zine library for download/print at home. Aside from website things I haven't been engaged in other creative work.

What's going on at work:

• The university decided to take the 4-week condensed winter intersession pilot idea and expand it to a 4-week condensed session every semester. I've been chatting with my boss to help solution for that requirement since our original "repeatable process" was written for a once yearly offering that might not ever happen again. Although I won't lead it this time, I'll be involved in planning since I managed it the first time.
• We got pilot access to ChatGPT so we can use it for work stuff (including proprietary information, which was a huge limitation for free versions since almost all our stuff involves customizations and company-specifics). I've been working on a DocBot for the content support team, and I got it to a good point where I was able to copy/paste questions from team chat and generally get the right answers, despite not being well-formatted prompts. It's limited use so the team can't test it themselves at the moment, but I'm excited to see where it goes!

January 31, 2025

I got on my computer to type up my month in review but instead of doing that, I decided to figure out how to publish my Obsidian notes to a website so I can (eventually) move my portfolio into my garden. So here we are!

Listening to: Silence (nighttime sounds on a Friday)

What I've been doing with websites:

• I have been in a slump since inauguration day, so not much. I finally built a page for my minizines so people can download and print them at home.
• Otherwise just working on this site tonight! I'm excited I figured out the workflow to publish from Obsidian to my new host Netlify. Netlify is free for my purposes! Previously I was paying $150+/year for a site that was much harder to manage.

What's going on creatively:

• I finished a coloring zine (which you can download from the zine link above). I used to make coloring zines a lot so I recently made a goal to make another one, and then I achieved it! Hoorah!
• I've focused most of my creative energy in Obsidian but I am getting a good flow down and taking lots of notes.

What's going on at work:

• This week I developed my first "official" RACI matrix (I've done them before, but for personal uses and understanding my role in something, not for a whole process/team). It took a few hours to build and fill out which was fun (but not that fun). The fun part was analysis and trying to summarize the matrix into a digestible format so people know what they're getting into before they look at it. We meet to discuss this next Friday.
• We got access to ChatGPT for a trial to see how we might be able to integrate the tool into our workflows (and specifically: create bots to help with work). I'm immediately hooked! I started with a DocBot (Doctor Bottom) where I plugged in 4 of my team's major guides (50+ pages each), added some structure and rules, and then began quizzing it with a bunch of questions. So far my colleagues and I are impressed with the results so far, though it still needs some tweaking.

January 25, 2025

It's been a weird week.

Listening to: Zenny pacing around and meowing 20 mins ahead of lunch time.

What I've been doing with websites:

• I've kind of been spiraling recently so not a lot, but I am starting to get more focus on how I want to share online and where my presence is most valuable to me and the people who want to see my stuff.

What's going on creatively:

• I am trudging through trying to keep up with all of my different ideas. I attribute this directly to starting ADHD meds. I finally have the energy but I don't know which one to focus on so I'm doing everything at once instead.
• I am starting a newsletter, we'll see how that goes, as a last resort to keep connected with people before I delete social media. My focus is creativity, process, places, and experiments.

What's going on at work:

• This was release week so I spent basically all week focused on writing release notes and making sure everything gets deployed properly. My role is shifting a little where I will continue to manage the release communications but no longer take such a huge part of deployment and release management. Still, I get to have my hands in all the pots as I communicate about all the platforms, so that's pretty cool.
• Recently I learned to let go! Sometimes there are projects that I feel I should be on because of my role and expertise and interest. However, there are plenty of people at this company who are just as good or even better than me at content management and user workflows. I've been so used to being in every project due to my experience here that it's actually a little overwhelming not to be in a project! I have to count my blessings, it's fantastic that we have enough resources so I don't need to be included all the time.

January 13, 2025

I spent a lot of tonight trying to figure out how to set up GitHub pages and publish from obsidian. Well anyway, I got through setting up GitHub pages!

Listening to: Animal Crossing soundtrack music

What I've been doing with websites:

• I'm building a digital garden in Obsidian and publishing my writing and portfolio that way. I'm really excited, I've been doing something similar to digital gardening for a while (but without the connections).
• Updating personal sites here and there with ideas. Nothing too big right now, going at a slow pace with ideas.

What's going on creatively:

• A friend of mine hosted a virtual art night and I sketched the outline for a coloring mini zine, which was one of my to do list items for a while. I'll have that up for download once I figure out all this publishing stuff!
• I restarted Zine Therapy and have been thinking about how I might dive into the creative part of it throughout the season (rather than waiting for the season to end). how can I reflect creatively and visually?

What's going on at work:

• We have quarterly planning this week so I'll be pretty focused on that.
• I had the opportunity to put together a few questions to ask the team about documentation, how they use it, how useful they find it, and so on. Looking forward to getting those survey results!

December 25, 2024

We had a low key Christmas because my nephew is in Peru with his mom and all of our life activities surround him.

Listening to: Christmas Evil (1980), which is appropriately very Christmasy, pretty evil, and extremely 1980.

What I've been doing with websites:

• I started putting my holiday horror and romance in the crypt kickers movie spreadsheet but obviously didn't finish it before Christmas. There are some New Year's ones so it'll get some use this year.
• Primarily focusing on the blog I guess, my mini project to do a weekly post is fairly successful although I'm already annoyed by it. However, I definitely do see myself keeping up with it monthly!

What's going on creatively:

• Outside of websites and Obsidian, not much. I have been reading a lot and therefore reflecting and writing a lot, but not doing much creatively.

Since it's Christmas I'm not going to talk about working in this one. Instead I'll talk about how the family went down to the National Harbor for my dad's birthday lunch and we ate at a Brazilian place (Fogo de Chão) that had the best coffee and the best buffet food I've ever eaten.

December 14, 2024

I just started using Obsidian for personal knowledge management so at the moment I'm transferring everything in my messy, awful system to here (or at least whatever I can copy/paste).

Listening to: Catching up with this week's news

What I've been doing with websites:

• I've been fairly consistently keeping a blog! Granted it's only been a few weeks, but I'm still proud of myself. I keep a document on my phone called "this week" where I note my reflections and thoughts throughout the week, and often those turn into blog posts full of interesting thoughts and ideas (or I think so, anyway). It feels nice to build a web space for myself and let all my thoughts spill out. It's something I've been missing for a while.
• I'm going to move maxwrites.com so it points here after I pay for the Obsidian publish account (later). I've been in progress copy/pasting things and reorganizing my writing.

What's going on creatively:

• In fall I fell into a journal trend to create a seasonal bingo card, then journal about each of the boxes as you complete them. I LOVED IT. I created another one for winter after successfully completing several BINGOs on my fall card. I love the aspect of laying out my favorite seasonal things with no pressure to do all of them. I love that I have a journal full of activities and memories.
• Most of my creative energy right now is going into websites! I've been slowly adding stuff to my Neocities site and expanding how I want to use it. Also, I finished Zine Therapy finally!

What's going on at work:

• We are in crunch time (you might refer to it as MAX CRUNCH time, if you wanted to). It's been extraordinarily busy and stressful! In November every year, right on Thanksgiving week, we have a classroom approval process for two different semesters to prepare for upcoming semesters. On top of that, the university I work with is piloting a condensed winter intersession (4 weeks instead of 8), so basically we are handling the course readiness work for 4 different types of class/term, and it all has to be done by the deadlines or else there's huge impact to faculty or students. On top of all that? Our learning management system is doing an automatic update that will impact students/faculty that we have to prepare communications for on a short timeline. How fun!
• I am working on wrapping up as much as I can before the year ends. I've been documenting several major processes (including managing the pilot semester I mentioned). It's interesting and fun to puzzle together these processes that the university has been doing for years, but never had documentation for. In my interviews I've found out that everyone has a different idea of what these processes are for, who does what (as long as it's not them), and almost no one is in alignment on terminology. Excited to be leading the documentation efforts for these so people will stop pointing fingers/blaming others when things go wrong. Everything will be properly scoped, all steps and considerations laid out, and moving forward theoretically these processes should have more positive impact!