I thought today would be a fine day to start a weekly update.
As the daily writing becomes more consistent (this being day 12 now), I feel a sense of chaos rising. The past couple of days, I’d begun to question what I was doing and why I was doing it. I felt like I was putting too much out, and it would be annoying and that I’m losing inspiration anyway. All the ghosts were rising from beneath the deck. Then I thought of something Rick Rubin said (I listened to his book The Creative Life last week. Very good stuff) about our duty as artists being to the art; our duty isn’t to ourselves or our self-expression or the audience, but to the art itself. I’m still digesting that but it’s renewed my dedication to these creations.
So, weekly update/review. One of the inspirations behind this is Brandon Sanderson, who releases one every week, updating the community on his progress with the next book and with all things Sanderson. It seems to me it’s also a good way of keeping on track of things. It’s good for the community and good for the work. Another motivation for starting this was to bring some order to the chaos of the daily writings. I thought this would be a good index for the weekly writings, so that if you don’t feel like reading seven pieces a week, you can check in with the weekly reviews and see if there’s any pieces in particular that jump out at you.
This Week’s Daily Pieces
So first and foremost, this week’s dailies:
Innisfreedom: last Sunday, I cobbled together some of the shots from my time in Kerry. My god, how I miss that paradise already.
Good Enough is the Enemy of Better: Monday’s article was my pushback against the pushback against perfectionism. Good enough isn’t good enough. We can do better.
The Nietzsche Trap: Tuesday’s blog was a reflection on my friend’s talk and the responses to the meaning of life: Pat and Siddhartha and how ideology gets in the way of life (or perhaps that’s just my Shadow speaking)
The Aesthetics of Chaos: some reflections on John Moriarty, whose work Dreamtime I started reading this week
Auguries of Insanity: I took the dubious step of talking about my dream world (which continues to trouble me) and the arc of dreams I’ve been having the past few months
The Opposite of Love: Friday, I wrestled with the question of opposites and whether beauty and love require opposites.
Hunted Man: an update on the dreams of the week that continued to plague me and escalate. The theme: being hunted/chased by dark forces
Between Imitation and Genius: yesterday’s piece was an archival piece actually. It was something I was wrestling with during the making of the beautiful life
Update on thoreau
The next video, as you know, is on Thoreau. On Monda,y I shot another scene with my friends David and Barry at the gorgeous Dromore Loch. I am looking forward to seeing that shot in the final video.
Then on Tuesday, the editing began in earnest. Aside from the writing in the morning, this was the primary focus of the week. It started well and I’m real pleased with the opening scene. Like the beautiful life, it’s a bit of an artsy opener with some breathing room in it. I love that.
But when it came to working on the second scene, I needed After Effects, and it all went to hell. I use Adobe’s After Effects for any motion graphics, titles, or more advanced editing. It’s a great supplement to Adobe’s Premiere Pro which is the main video editing software I use. After Effects has been crashing on me pretty regularly since the upgrade to 2025. This time I tried going back to 2024, but that loses the cross-compatibility with Premiere Pro then. So I lost a couple of days there trying to check out my graphics card for errors, then deleting After Effects and reinstalling, then deleting the entire Adobe suite and reinstalling.
A carnival of errors. Yesterday I decided to move to a different video editing software Da Vinci Resolve. I’ve been seeing other creators I respect talking about its editing this year, and I had it at the back of my mind. I’ve been hearing about its colour grading for years—this was its sole purpose originally. Anyway, at the peak of my frustrations, I began thinking more seriously about it and I’ve decided to take the plunge. Since I’ve started Thoreau in Adobe, I’ll finish it there, but I’m excited to level up my colour grading skills in future and I’m very very excited about a software that integrates both video editing and motion graphics in the same app and without causing the computer to run like an escargotoire of snails. Also: it’s not an extortion racket. Very exciting. But for now, I’ll have to muddle on through with Adobe and hope my purge this week will stave off the crashes until I can get this finished.
So, a bit more of a technical update this week than anything else. But we are making good progress. There’s still about 1.5 scenes to shoot/reshoot. I’m hoping it’s not too optimistic to say next Sunday as a release date. Errors allowing, I think that should be doable.
Other Updates
In other news, this is a great time to announce my next big project, which involves a trip to Massachusetts. I’ll be visiting Toronto for a week to catch up with my brothers and some other folks there, and then one of my brothers will be joining me for a meditation retreat in the Berkshires. I’m very excited about that, and I’ll be talking about it much more in the coming weeks.
I’m doing a podcast with PF Jung this week. Not sure what we’ll be talking about, but I always enjoy talking to Paul.
I think that concludes the weekly roundup. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Till tomorrow,
May the fourth be with you,
James