Archive of posts from June 2026

Most of the thoughts I share in this journal never get posted on social media etc.

Because the objective of these words isn’t to get likes or attention.

The objective of these words is to help me discover what I think, and to share the journey of those thoughts with those who care in the future.

Perhaps future-me, looking back on past ideas. Perhaps my son, getting to know what I was thinking about when he was too young to...

We love learning in my household.

We’re planning to build a small library into our home once we clear the room out planned for it, and carve some time to carve some wood to make it how we envision it.

But it’s not just books (though there are a lot of books).

There is also comics. Videos. Little toys that remind us of lessons learned. Pictures we’ve drawn. Photos we’ve taken.

Learning is a vibrant, exciting, fulfilling-for-its-own-sake passtime. Something to...

Talk to almost any freelancer.

They’ll tell you about the difference between the opportunity, and what shipped.

A wonderful, vibrant, exciting possibility, and what shipped.

A novel new approach that customer interviews revered, and what shipped.

A huge part of making great work is having CEOs that don’t ruin it.

I saw a quote today that tickled me:

“The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memoryh was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrasttructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profies that are mathematically impossible.”

Fascinating. A fun reminder to not...

We don’t like when big tech talks about what their products will do to writers, or artists, or musicians, because they’re not writers, or artists, or musicians.

Artists want to work together to push art forward. We do it all on our own, and we enjoy it intensely.

Same for writers. We do it all on our own, and we enjoy it intensely.

Same for musicians. I’m not a musician, but I adore watching musicians collaborate and advance their genres.

My team uses Basecamp because all of the work is in one place.

Our marketing uses Brevo because all of the email and customer data is in one place.

Our animation pipeline uses Toon Boom products because everything from storyboard through to compositing is ine one place.

Our codebases use standard syntax and structure because every developer who touches it finds it easy and familiar.

Our scripts are written in .fdx files because every scriptwriter knows what to do with...

The funny thing about the list of things on your mind right now…

Is if you were to write them all down…

And cross out the ones that don’t directly impact the heart of your work or those you love…

You may just find that the list reduces by 90%.

Just from asking one question.

Isn’t it better to focus on just those things, then?

Agencies love interns and junior talent because they have fresh eyes with fresh ideas, unburdened by memories of what got shot down, what clients won’t go for, and what the market “expects nowadays”.

What they overlook is, we should all remain that way anyway. What use is your contribution if you’re happy to be neutered by every negative experience along the way.

If you can, try to be like a junior with experience, not like a war veteran afraid of...

Great artists don’t draw all day.

They draw a lot. When they’re tired of that, they read about drawing. When they’re tired about that, they think about drawing. When they’re tired of that, they do something else.

All in service of their craft, for its own sake, and for those they toil for.

It’s okay to put the pencil down so long as the fire keeps burning.

Lean into your craft for long enough… and you’ll find you disagree with every one of your heroes on at least something.

This can feel disheartening at first. Lonely, even.

Then you realize it’s your voice taking form. Your point of view. An expression perhaps worth sharing, a by-product of your tenure in the space.

Lean into it — it makes you our brethren, instead of merely our fans.

The things you’re deliberating over…

Reading reviews about online…

Umming and arring about…

Do they make your family meaningfully happier or your art meaningfully better?

If not, why not ditch the evaluation and just focus on making your family meaningfully happier or your art meaningfully better?

If a toddler draws a picture, then AI “improves” it by generating a lifelike version of the drawing… does that make the drawing better?

Or does it steal a gift from that child away from you.

Or rewrite history as we lose evidence of their growth, perspective, and effort.

Or remove the desire to improve in a skill that computers “will just do better anyway”.

What if the generated lifelike version of the drawing removed the art, by removing the...

What do you do when there’s zero feedback?

The best thing I’ve found is to… just not care about the size of the response. Most of the things I’ve made that did well took a minute for others to understand. They were novel… different… and that means less competition (good) but also slower time to “get it” (bad).

So we have to either make peace with periods of zero feedback, or make peace with grueling, never-ending, fierce competition.

No right...