Timekeeper

Words for a mother who has passed.
...

Buoyant ships, steady and slow,
Moments where time seems to suspend,
Yet the journey always continues.

Grandkids, like time itself—
Always enough in the moment,
But never enough to fill a lifetime.

Blue Jays on a summer afternoon,
The crack of a bat echoes,
Always waiting for the season
That might come again.

Mustard, bright and simple,
Her joy in every bite,
A small piece of her passed down.

And the Browns—
Through all the seasons,
Her loyalty never wavered,
Faithful till the end.

Fussing with Notes

I think I'm finally done fussing over digital notes and writing apps.

Like Jack, I've tried every note-taking and organizing app under the sun, but none of them seem to stick. ¹ I got lost in the endless customization of Obsidian. I loved TiddlyWiki, but the default markup language and finicky saving functions drove me nuts. I thought Logseq would be the one, but I couldn’t get my head around its linking protocols or outlining structure—and iCloud syncing for these apps is painfully slow and cumbersome. ²

Back in the early days, around 2007-2012, I was all about plain text files using nvAlt. Those were simpler times. The portability, the lack of distractions—it was a perfect system when I only had to worry about personal devices like my MacBook and iPhone. But as time went on, my setup became multi-platform: iPhone, MacMini server, Linux personal laptop, Windows for work. This complexity pushed me to search for a single, cross-platform app that would give me a consistent experience everywhere I worked.

That app doesn’t exist. Go ahead, try to prove me wrong—you won’t.

So, it feels inevitable that I return to what I know works: Markdown-flavored text files.

No more fussing. No more bloated apps.

Just text files and two simple tools—1Writer on iOS and QOwnNotes everywhere else.

I’m done. I’m spent.

It’s time to stop fussing and get back to writing. Time to come home, back to simple systems that allow my time and energy to be spent where they matter most.

The Perpetual Dilly Bar Machine

Let me start by stating the most important fact— I am not a fan of Dairy Queen. It's overpriced for ice cream, and no matter what I order, the quality is consistently underwhelming.

Yet, I find myself at our local Dairy Queen far more often than I'd like, thanks to two factors: a) my spouse loves it, and b) it's only a five-minute walk down the street. As a result, I end up consuming more of their 'treats' than I care to admit (or should).

After all these visits, I’ve uncovered what I now call The Perpetual Dilly Bar Machine. It’s a workflow, a system really, that provides an almost endless supply of Dilly Bars. Here’s how it works:

1. Purchase anything. To maximize the long-term return, buy the cheapest item on the menu.
2. Keep your receipt.
3. Go online and complete the satisfaction survey. Whether you’re genuinely interested in offering feedback or not, the survey can be done in under a minute if you're focused.¹
4. Record the survey code on your receipt.
5. Return to the same Dairy Queen within 30 days with your receipt (and code) and claim your free Dilly Bar.
6. IMPORTANT! When you get the free Dilly Bar, make sure they process it as a transaction and give you a receipt. Most employees won’t bother unless you ask, but they are required to.
7. With the receipt from your free Dilly Bar, you're eligible to complete another satisfaction survey.
8. Rinse and repeat—free Dilly Bars forever.

Now, to be clear, Dilly Bars—like most of Dairy Queen's offerings—aren’t anything special. They’re usually just... meh. But on a hot day or after a tough volleyball game, a Dilly Bar can really hit the spot.

Ideally, I’d prefer to hack a system at a place that serves a premium dessert, something actually worth eating. But since I haven’t found that opportunity yet, I’ll make do with free Dilly Bars for now.

On Coming Home

There’s so much richness in Mandy Brown’s piece on writing, work, context, and creating a space for oneself.

Brown focuses on the shift from using social platforms for publishing—rigid systems that haven't evolved with users' needs—to building spaces where intentional connections between ideas can form and grow over time. Instead of being focused on content ownership, she’s more interested in context, in placing her thinking "within [their] own body of work."

One of the things that struck me most was Brown’s intention to shape her reading, writing, and other online efforts around a single topic—books:

"I made a decision many years ago to shape my work around the books I read. … It’s allowed me to cultivate the soil to suit my purposes—rather than having to adapt my garden to the soil I was given. Not every seed I’ve planted has thrived, of course. But after all these years, some are quite hardy, while others have made some very rich compost. And I find myself often amazed by what emerges: not only the seeds I planted but a great many I never anticipated, connections and stories I didn’t see until I was right on top of them, until they were tangled at my feet."

That kind of foresight and deliberate action to sustain a process over time is something I envy. I've had many ideas on how to focus my creative energy online, but I haven’t stuck with any one thing long enough to turn it into a lasting practice.¹ Maybe Brown's words are a push in that direction. 🤷‍♂️

Another key point is Brown’s reflection on labour and the role of friction in meaningful work:

"And more often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor, the effort to work things out. Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being."

As much as I value efficiency, I find I’m most efficient with the work I care about least. I try to streamline tasks I don't enjoy so I can make space for things I want to labour over. With work I’m passionate about, the time and mental effort I invest in thinking and creating is often what I enjoy most—the process is more fulfilling than the result.

On the subject of AI doing work for us, Brown adds:

"But no one arguing for this seems to have asked what’s left when the work is gone. What is the experience of asking for something to appear and then instantly receiving it? What changes between the thought and the manifestation? I fear that nothing changes, that nothing is changed in such a making, least of all ourselves."

What happens when the work is gone? Does more work appear, or do we fill that time with things worth labouring over? I see the value in AI taking care of less meaningful tasks—as long as we use that time for what really matters.

Lastly, Brown touches on the nostalgia many of us, myself included, feel for an earlier time in the social media landscape. For me, that’s Twitter circa 2007:

"…a great number of my closest friends are people I met in the halcyon days of Twitter, and I find I still often long for that kind of connection, the ambient awareness of people in whose company I felt at home. But I know that longing to be a kind of nostalgia, an unrealizable wish to return to a past that never was quite as I remember it."

I've been longing for a return to some version of the past I remember for some time. I’ve even gone as far as drafting a manifesto to revive something from that era, hoping to reconnect with people from my past. But maybe nostalgia is holding me back from letting something new emerge.

Ultimately, coming home isn’t about a place for content at all. It’s about finding what home is in the first place—labouring through a process that builds the context and connections to carry us forward.

A Return to Facebook...Ugh

More than 13 years ago, I left Facebook behind.

I won't say I haven’t occasionally considered returning or created profiles only to delete them immediately, but for the most part, I’ve been— and still am— happy with my decision to leave.

Platforms like Facebook are invasive; they steal time and energy without earning it, and they benefit from who I am more than I benefit from the value they claim to provide.

The past 13 years without Facebook have been mostly joyful. Although I'm often the last to hear about a social update or find out about weekend events after they’ve passed, the freedom to control my own time far outweighs the minor inconvenience of missing out on information that, in truth, I’m not terribly upset to miss.

However, recently, it’s become more difficult to find basic information from businesses and service providers, as they increasingly post only on their Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts— many of which are closed to those without an account. Trying to get service updates, contact information, or keep up with details that used to arrive via email newsletters has become harder with each passing month.

So here I am, 13 years later, with a Facebook account again.

It’s not that I thought this day would never come— but I really thought it would never come.

With the sole purpose of gathering information and the occasional Marketplace post to expand my Kijiji listings, my goal is to keep my profile as locked down as possible and use it sparingly.

I hate that it’s come to this, but I feel like I’ve been left with no choice. Unless businesses and service providers stop building their presence inside these walled gardens, I’m left with little option but to join them.