What did I do this week
I missed last week’s weeknotes thanks to being in a bit of a spiral with the news and gearing up for serious ice and freezing weather that thankfully didn’t destroy our joke of a power grid here. Getting caught up this week with some of the things I’ve managed to tackle over the last two weeks.
Personalsit.es
I added my website to the list on personalsit.es and simultaneously found a repository of some really neat websites dedicated to individual people carving out their corner of the internet. It’s wildly diverse with some sites being very thought out and others being somewhat bland. It was a good bit of inspiration and some notes taken on what not to do, but overall such a cool experience. I love the idea and the people who manage the site additions do an excellent job of sticking to a specific set of criteria.
New Video
I shot and edited a new video simply to practice video editing. I haven’t done that in a serious way in years, and it took me back to when I used to attempt a vlog back in the golden age of vlogs on Youtube. The resulting video was something I am pretty happy with and that seems to be a rare emotion for me when it comes to things I make.
Old Blogs
I hit some sort of mile marker on WordPress.com last week as well, receiving a “hey, you have been on WP.com for 12 years” email that prompted me to dig up every blog I’ve ever had. While I have been blogging mostly on Blogger since 2005 up until about 12 years ago when I switched to WordPress and then started hosting my own blog on the .org platform, I have never been super consistent. The tour of old content, laced in cringe, has been fun and I may drag a lot of it over to this site just for preservation.
UpScrolled
TikTok went fully United States propaganda machine with the final sale of the US version of the platform last weekend, so I finally deleted my account and bid farewell to the thing that helped me dissociate when my brain needed to shut off for the last 6 years. Covid lockdown really helped cement that app into my daily life and I had a love/hate relationship with it off and on.
The platform that seemed to rise to the top in the exodus was UpScrolled, a platform that feels a lot like an Instagram clone but is buggy as hell and left me feeling really disengaged after a couple days. This is pretty typical for a lot of new platforms, and I’m interested to see how they fare with their position on not pushing agendas with the algorithm and being an equal platform for all views. We know how well that generally works out when you don’t have a clear guideline on not being tolerant of intolerance, but it feels like they might take off. I’m invested enough to stake out my username and visit the app as it improves.
2026 Work Plan
While I can’t/don’t want to talk too much about my job due to security and privacy policies, I did manage to drudge up enough creative drive to really invest some serious time into my plan for the year. The key thing here is this being the second year I waited until the end of January and the beginning of February to really start to plan for yearly goals, both professionally and personally. It seems to work very well, both in general and with this particular company, and I feel like it’s due to how off new year efforts feel right at the start of the calendar year. My brain is still in rest and seed-planting mode in January.
Vision Board
Last year was the first year I did a vision board rather than just doing nothing because New Years resolutions are so broken in how we practice that tradition. While I can’t say that it kept me focused all year, it did drive a lot of movement early in the year and I wound up checking off quite a bit. I’ll give it another go this year despite starting a bit later than intended.
Apple Creator Studio
I started transitioning off the Adobe platform last year, right around the time I also started “de-Google-ifying” my life and switched to Proton. It’s been a pretty positive switch aside from the phone apps. I still have a deep dependence on Lightroom on my phone as I’ve never found something that matches and makes my workflow as smooth as that app. Having spent my life completely entrenched in Adobe until last year, it’s been a rough transition even if it’s been positive ultimately. Apple decided to do something surprising and took a bunch of their creator software and turned it into a subscription service. While I’d normally be adamant about owning the software outright, the rapid change in software year over year has made that less of a priority, and I love the addition of Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Pixelmator Pro to the deal with nothing but updates and full integration in a noticeable way with my Apple ecosystem. I’ve always loved Final Cut Pro but balked at the price, so this makes me very happy.
What did I learn this week
I’ll be honest, I feel like my brain was not in learning mode the last two weeks. Yes, there was a lot of reading, mostly about Saxon runes, requeering the Futhark runes and understanding the wider culture of the Vikings and how we decouple it from the fascist appropriation that’s dominated it for years, but a good chunk of the time I’d actually spend learning something new was wrapped up in the news and trying to understand and discuss the political outlook of the U.S.. Not every week can be wildly educational, but little moments were still had.
Important to note, I did spend a decent hour or two really diving into the design trends for 2026. Not technically learning, but it did feel like there were micro moments of learning design theory in the mix.
What stumped me this week
I actually struggled a lot with strategic planning this week. I know I mentioned that I was able to dump a lot of energy into 2026 planning, but it didn’t come without a lot of trying to work around my blocks around future planning and how to tie needed changes to long term, measurable projects. I still don’t feel like I have a good grasp of it, but I’ll muddle my way through it and hopefully unpack more as I learn about how my AuDHD deals with the future.
What did I listen to this week
Bizarrely, a lot of Cats, the musical. Don’t ask me why. It just happened to scratch an itch.
What did I play this week
With how bad my game slump has been lately, I’m considering just yoinking this for now until Witchbrook launches or I detach myself from Rivals. I did my dailies in Animal Crossing New Horizons and I’m still loving the updates. It’s returned a lot of the joy the game brought during Covid lockdown and I think we need a little of that every day right now.
Week in emojis
🥛🧻🥶❄️🧊🔥⚖️♈️🕯️🐑
Weekly link
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/people/its-never-been-more-vital-to-have-reliable-sounding-boards-willing-to-tell-us-that-actually-weve-got-this-terribly-wrong-in-defence-of-snobs – Stick with me on this one. Yes, this is not your typical “oooo cool website”, but it is a fascinating article on the importance of the snob. As someone who has been proud to be a little snobbish on some things, someone who uses it in a very casual way like “Apple snob”, and someone who genuinely never wants to be defined as someone who thinks themselves superior to anyone but the worst people in society (worst defined as universally loathed, anti-social, unrepentant wastes of oxygen), this was a read I needed months ago and still go back to for the thought provoking ideas it stirs up. I’m hopefully going to write my own thoughts on this at some point in the near future. Enjoy!
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