I thought it would be useful to make a list. Can't tackle problems if you don't know what the problems are!

• Visual clutter & distractions, inefficient use of my screen
• Too many tabs nuff said
• Too many emails nuff said
• Too many steps to get into working on a specific project (different browser windows/files to open etc)
• No separation between work & personal tasks, messaging, apps, contacts, etc.
• Twitch-distractions — stuff I do automatically (to the extent of muscle memory) whenever I feel a moment of stuckness or indecision, like open reddit/bluesky/twitter (it's not because I want, specifically, to open them) or even tab through open windows obsessively
• Rabbit holes (good AND bad)
• Losing my place (or fearing losing my place)
• Where's my stuff? Sometimes I don't know, or can't remember if a doc was in Notion (barf), Google Docs (slightly lesser barf), Discord, etc.
• Lack of easy capture for ideas, screenshot, links, things to read or watch, PDFs, etc., which then leads to either letting them escape entirely or ineffective hoarding bc I'm afraid of losing it
• Piles in multiple places that are annoying to sift through and therefore never get sorted through (the downloads folder is a place where hopes go to die)
• Lack of fruitful organization for ideas, screenshots, links, etc. which results in
• No actionable pipeline from idea/screenshot/note/saved whatever to actually producing work with it, whether that's posting, analyzing, using it as a jumping-off point, etc.
• Difficulty sharing all the little artefacts (links, pdfs, screenshots, etc)
• Lack of usable feeds for email newsletters, relevant new content, etc.
• Lack of a daily plan or agenda that's easy to set up and review each day
• Out of sight, out of mind for calendars, emails, etc. — even whole ass projects
• To-do lists are horrible and end up massively cluttered (just like screenshots, links, ideas)
• Every PKIM tool is horrible and overwrought, making it worse to use than nothing (at least for me) (god I hate Markdown) and they don't work the way I think or want to think with my saved knowledge
• Getting sucked in by the screen — accidental hyperfocus
• Under-stimulation turns out to be a problem for me sometimes; background noise or gentle music helps, so does a weighted blanket or (for reading) being in hot water, etc. (and over-stimulation is the issue other times)
• Lack of routine is mostly a mental problem but the tools sure don't help (this includes taking breaks)
• Friction that makes me want to scream (web pages cluttered with ads, popups, etc.)
• Block be it writer's block, designer's block, marketer's block, etc. The friction of getting into a project (that's purely mental) results in just random fucking about that doesn't get anywhere
• Dizziness — it's not the exact sensation I feel but light-emitting screens can get really overwhelming
• Cold is a surprisingly difficult productivity blocker for me and it happens at times that don't make sense

Then all the ::waves hand:: brain stuff happened. I've barely had any mental capacity to do any work at all, much less get all metacognitive about it.

So I've been digging around in and "working" with a half-broken pile of messy shit for a long time, because it sorta (not really) functioned and anyway I had much more critical things to spend my energy on. Also, my M1 MBP only kinda worked? I have no idea what's wrong with it; hardware tests always passed with flying colors and I just muddled through because what would Apple do if it showed nothing? And that would take energy too.

But now my brain is, mostly, back in my braincase, and I got a used M2 Max 16" because I couldn't function with the half-functioning laptop any more.

And this time… I want to set it up right.

I'll be writing about this stuff in detail, I expect, but in the mean time, here are some of the pretty slick tools I'm using so far.

What I'm using/trialing currently

1. Stage Manager. It's so helpful for my slightly damaged ADHD brain to have the other apps disappear when I'm working.
2. Mimestream. Testing out this native mail client for gmail (we use Apps for Domains, or whatever it's called now) and it seems really nice, although the key combos are horrific and I'll end up editing most of them I think.
3. Grila. A menu popup calendar that's much bigger and seemingly much more useful than Fantastical, and keyboard-oriented.
4. rcmd. From the same guys as Grila, an alternative to tabbing through open apps, where you can use the right command key to go directly to an app with its first letter.
5. Dropover. A drag & drop "receptacle" power tool, especially handy with Stage Manager.
6. Hush. A Safari extension that manages to zero out most web popovers and cookie banners. It really helps! I need to find a good ad blocker next.
7. HyperDuck. Install this app on your Mac and iPhone/iPad to effortlessly send web sites from your mobile devices to your computer.
8. TabSpace. Safari extension to save tabs and sessions and organize them as you see fit. This is going to be invaluable.
9. History Book. Safari extension + standalone app to save full text copies of articles, posts, etc., you come across so you can do a full text search if you can't find something again. (Safari's history search is godawful.)
10. Unprocrastinator, from the same maker as History Book. It's a Safari extension that lets you set a 30-second gratification delay on various web sites. I'm using it to stop unconsciously opening Bluesky, which is not something I do because I want to scroll, it's like a fidget. I can stop it.
11. I'm trying Readwise, not sure if I'll stick with it or if I'll switch to something like self-hosted Omnivore. But it's nice so far. I know I can use Readwise to sync up my Kindle notes and maybe do Read it Later on my Kindle? Or if I get another eink tablet? We shall see. My goal is to 1. stop tab hoarding (which is a combination of factors, not just read-it-later) and make reading my backlog easier and more rewarding than scrolling bullshit which is what I do mostly just because it's easy.
12. For doing my web-based document work (which I usually do in Chrome), I'm trying out Tabme and Workona as sort of "launchpads" for my various projects, to gather all the related gdocs, Notions, references, yadda in one place. The one thing I absolutely am sick to death of doing is looking up the links to shit because I can't remember where it is. And I will literally die before I manage a list of links in a doc file. Again.

Things I'm going to try but haven't touched yet:

1. I want to try Obsidian, which can integrate with Readwise (and other tools). Unclear if I will like it, since I'm allergic to Markdown… but it has a lot of plugins and customizability. Blergh?
2. Raycast or Alfred (again). I haven't tried Raycast and it looks overall vastly superior to Alfred, which I never liked because it was never as good as Quicksilver used to be. (Alas, Quicksilver — which I started using as soon as it came out — has sucked ass for years and years now.) The one thing I can't believe is that Raycast doesn't have the feature where you select an app and then hit the right arrow to pull up a list of recent files from that app, specifically, to launch directly. That right there is one of the world's biggest time savers. What the fuck! Quicksilver had it, Alfred has it — but I don't like Alfred.
3. Dockside. A file tray… a la classic Mac OS folder drawers.
4. TabDirector and/or Tab Finder for Safari.
5. MacWhisper, for audio transcription using Whisper on-computer (no cloud service).
6. A good screenshot tool.
7. A more convenient screencast tool than Screenflow, which has its uses but I want something in between that and the built-in tool, or Loom, which I hate unless it's for sending directly to somebody.
8. I really want to find an alternative to Spaces that works in a way that makes sense (actually acts like virtual desktops from the good old days).
9. I need a clipboard manager. Unclear if I'll end up using a standalone one or Raycast or whatever.
10. Text expansion? I used to be a big user of TypeIt4Me and TextExpander back in the day and it looks like they have modern OS X versions too.
11. Some kinda jottable notes tool that isn't Stickies and isn't Apple Notes (ew). Maybe an Apple Notes alternative would be nice.

Open to suggestions if you have 'em.

Blocklist (mute/mute list) of people

1. When viewing a shared block list, it should hoist certain people to the top:
   1. the people you follow,
   2. who follow you
   3. (and ideally — altho this is much more complicated — the people you reply to, and/or people your mutuals follow)
   4. it should say what the relationship is: "you follow them" "they follow you" "mutuals" etc.
   5. …so you can click a checkbox next to a name to remove someone from your individual application of that list before applying
2. Need to be able to review a block list you used after applying, and it should also hoist people up, so you can see if you've had unintended consequences already applied, including to check individual accounts to see if it was maybe put together in bad faith
3. Blocklists in general should be sortable, including sort by # of followers (after the section of "you know these people") to see if they are being used in bad faith to shut down popular critics etc.

Mutes

I love that you have timed mutes and an exception for followers on mute keywords. We could use some more controls.

1. Mute reposts and quote posts on an individual account level instead of the entire timeline (although please do keep this global feature, it's awesome)
2. Mute a person for a time period
3. Renew mutes that expired with 1 click instead of having to re-enter them
4. A way to save/share a mute list of multiple keywords with an editable duration for that entire grouping, e.g.: "keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4"
   1. don't think they need to be broadly shareable, like blocklists are, but maybe a copy/paste thing to share with a friend, or to save in your Notes app for later application during, you know, Events

When blocking an individual

I know it makes sense from an architecture standpoint that blocking someone doesn't make them unfollow you — they created the follow-record, and you can't or shouldn't be able to "edit" their record, however… the soft-block is necessary for harmony because it reduces an irritant without being too obvious, and it also isn't as harsh as a full block.

Much like a block-record prevents them from seeing my posts entirely by overruling their follow-record…

There should be a "can't follow me" record I can create that will supercede their follow-record. The way federal law supercedes local.

My wishes about who may follow me are more important than the wishes of someone who wants to follow me. That's why I can block them, after all.

Hide post vs mute post

Currently if you click "Hide Post" on, for example, the top post of a thread someone you follow is posting that aggravates you, it hides it completely and forever. Same goes for a news article or image that is being reposted 50 times a day.

This is great for really bothersome content you absolutely don't want to ever see again, including in search.

But much like muting a person, you may just want to not see a thread constantly updating etc. without sending it to the abyss forever.

So we should be able to…

1. "Soft" hide a post without making it permanently inaccessible, e.g. it should show up in their profile and search

This wasn't a question I'd ever asked myself, back in the days before I learned that internal monologue isn't, actually, a metaphor. That just blew my mind. Then I started wondering what else about my brain was different, what things I'd always accepted as just the way consciousness works.

Case in point: I don't have any internal monologue whatsoever.

Sure, I can summon a voice to silently read for sound, to write or rehearse what I want to say, and it's my voice. The voice never just says things. I'm the puppet-master.

And… I don't really have a visual imagination. I do have a visual memory, although it's effortful and patchy like a moving spotlight.

I think with something called unsymbolized thoughts.

And, as it happens, a whole whackton of different types of synesthesias.

I feel my way through a lot of things that others would apparently verbalize or visualize.

I don't see letters or numbers as colors (I don't see them at all), or taste them as flavors, or hear them as sounds. I've got none of the "traditional" synesthesia, in fact, and for most of my life, I didn't realize I had any at all.

But I can draw an apple even though I can't really imagine one (although I can remember a specific one, sort of, if I've seen one recently). I can draw the layout of my house. I can draw the layout of the house I grew up in. How? I know it. How? Memory, of course; I remember the parts and in what order.

But also, feelings.

I feel shapes, I feel balance, I feel correctness, too, a lot of the time. I even feel social situations.

Here's an example: When people refuse to listen, it feels stifling and strangling. Not metaphorically — although also not literally.

This is the part that's hard to explain: I don't hallucinate the sensation of individual fingers on my throat or the weight of pillow on my face… but neither am I using a euphemism for frustrated or angry; the feeling isn't an emotion, it's sensation.

But, and here's the tricky bit: it's not the sensations of emotion.

How does it feel? Well, how do you feel inside an MRI? It's very much like that… Things too close and too loud. A sensation of squeezing. A readiness that can't be released. Held down, heavy, trapped, powerless. A weighted blanket, but malignant.

It's not feeling frustration, or feeling my heart rate increase and my stomach churn, which are the physical hallmarks of frustration… I feel the feelings that engender frustration.

But — again — not a literal hallucination of a weighted blanket, but sort of… the sensory symbol of it. The Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra of perception. Not specifically those people, not specifically that place, or the specific events that happened, but a representation of the entire milieu.

Here's another example: When I'm trying to do something and tools just absolutely will not cooperate, when things get in my way, it feels like I'm moving in molasses, like I'm stuck, like my hands are in thick boxing gloves and I'm unable to grasp the objects I want to manipulate. It doesn't matter that I'm just sitting in a chair and the tool is a piece of software and the heaviest thing I have to manipulate is my finger on the trackpad.

Or sometimes it feels like I'm straining my arm to reach for something just out of my grasp and my fingers can almost but not quite close on it, and then it skitters away when I touch it.

My muscles feel it, but not utterly, not genuine straining or grasping (I'd be too exhausted every day to function!) — just the ghost of a memory.

Like… how can something "feel familiar" even when you can't place it? It's like that. But all the time and in a million different flavors.

When I'm doing a layout and it's not working — whether it's a layout of a process, or a graphic design, or a living room — sometimes it will feel stagnant, sometimes it will feel claustrophobic, sometimes it will feel like it's teetering uncertainly, sometimes it'll feel cutting, dark, or muddy and sticky, or dull.

Sometimes I'll just feel that needs to be over there. It's like a tugging, an emptiness, or a sense of heaviness tilting.

And when a layout is working, it's an openness or freshness, a clicking into place, a peaceful gong, a balance, a settling and a sigh, a rightness.

This leads to some interesting skills you wouldn't expect for someone with no visual imagination: I'm freakishly good at centering things without a ruler or a measuring tape. And nobody can pack a car full like me. Even though I can barely summon a two-dimensional mental shape much less rotate it, I can feel if something will fit, and what the right order is.

(Ironically, trying to summon and rotate a mental shape feels like trying to lift a weight with my brain. Not great!)

Sometimes it's less of an overall milieu and more of a sensory flavor.

Fonts feel like things… sharp, prickly, cozy, cuddly, light, heavy, bouncy, moribund, fresh, greasy, stale, oppressive.

So do people.

Systems — and the natural rules governing how things work or don't work, which are a sort of static-balancing system — are perhaps my favorite thing to sense. They feel free-flowing and fresh and light, or frozen, balancing, converging, heavy and piling up, stagnant and putrefying, spinning out of control. I can feel where the next step should be, even if I'm in the progress of designing it and therefore it isn't even there yet.

And, when I sit and think about systems, when I "run through" the system in my mind, I feel different things at different steps in the process as the system "runs" and the states change. I can feel when things are stuck, or will be, and when they are unstuck and golden.

A good system feels incredible. Satisfying.

So what if I can't sit and imagine scenes or characters or beautiful places? I can experience systems in my mind.

On the negative side, I'm feeling these things all the time, whether or not I'm intentionally thinking about them. The designed world often feels off-kilter or outright hostile to me. I can't relax in a badly designed room. Most systems in society are unbalanced, sludgey, stuck. It gets exhausting.

And, of course, I have misophonia. It's an utterly unreasonable thing; people who don't have it tend to think it's fake but, I assure you, it's very real, and exceedingly unpleasant. Turns out it's probably a type of synesthesia. A sound, rather than triggering a color or a flavor, triggers an emotion. For me it hits a button that delivers instant rage. I can control what I do with the rage but I can't control the misophonia itself. I have to wear headphones if my husband is eating when I'm not. I've been driven out of a home due to sounds in the neighborhood that triggered it. I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but certain songs always make me cry — push button get tears — even though they don't make me emotionally sad, and it often happens on the very first listen, before I've had any time to associate it with anything.

In conclusion, if I have to have one…

I've been like this my whole life and I've always known that this is how I do things; I've always known I design by feel, by experimenting with things until it feels right, that I'm not like other designers who start with an "idea" (using their visual imagination, I'm guessing!) and then simply execute it. And I've always known — and been annoyed by the fact that — other people aren't bothered by inefficiencies or injustices the way I am, presumably because they aren't soaking in the sensations of it 24/7. And of course I couldn't miss that I was driven to fury by noises nobody else even heard.

Yet I never thought of these as synesthesias until a couple years ago.

Just like I never knew that not having inner visuals was unusual.

Or that the inner monologue is real!

I've never felt like I was missing these things; I didn't know they were real to miss. And now that I know, that's fine, I still like my way, thanks very much. It makes me who I am! (Except for the misophonia; that feels like an outside invasion and I'd give that up in a heartbeat.)

There must be a whole world of synesthesias to explain. I want to learn more.

But I digress. This ending feels loosey-goosey and abrupt; the system of this essay is weak and faltering here, like a tree with a wounded trunk. But I'm going to end on this note anyway, because I've said what I wanted to say.

If you've got an interesting synesthesia, I'd like to hear about it!

It was the place I escaped to, to escape to the internet, magical yet pedestrian.

And it was there I felt myself transported when I first experienced Pinkydoll.

Gang gang
Gang gang
*lick lick* Mmm ice cream so good
Yeehaw yes you got me feelin like a cowgirl
*lick lick* Mmm ice cream so good
Balloon! *pop pop pop pop*
Gang gang
Gang gang

My first thought was, What the fuck is this?

My second thought was, It's Subservient Chicken.

Picture it: It's 2004 and you're staring at your CRT screen, surfing the internet (yeah, that's right, I said it). You see a simple web page. Black. There's a video stream there, of a windowless room, low-ceilinged, stocked with anonymous motel furniture… and in that room there's a man in a chicken costume — the face too real, feathers bedraggled — posing, waiting. You feel like a voyeur.

And then there's a text box.

It beckons… you can type in it, anything you want.

What do you want the chicken to do?

The Subservient Chicken was ready & waiting to fulfill your request.

Make a wish — moonwalk, throw a pillow, do a pushup, turn off the lights, pick your nose — and Subservient Chicken would make it come true.

(And when you inevitably went too far, he'd come close — uncomfortably close — and shake a finger at you. Tsk tsk!)

It was creepy; it was incredible. It felt… personal. It felt real.

It wasn't, though. Of course it wasn't. The site got millions of visitors within days… it would've taken thousands of chickens. Nobody has that kind of budget.

Soon it became clear that Subservient Chicken was nothing but a simple script and a few hundred recorded clips and a long list of matching keywords. A minimum viable fake-out. Clever as hell.

But, even knowing how the trick was done, the illusion was overpowering. It still felt real. And it was still intoxicating.

The Subservient Chicken wasn't a person, you see, even when you believed the thing was really live. The resistance you'd feel to ordering an actual human being to moonwalk, throw a pillow, or pick their nose? Gone. Mediated away by the costume, the setting, the lighting. The mise-en-scène transported the Subservient Chicken to a fantasy world where the experience felt real, but your actions didn't. Real, but without the trappings of reality, like a moral aversion to making someone feel used.

Only the pure experience of power remained.

The mind-altering, giddy joy of sending a message out to the internet — the universe — and watching it become real. Magic.

Which brings us to the so-called NPC streamers.

Instead of something fake pretending to be real, they're someone real pretending to be fake.

For some reason, this creeps people out. The overwhelming response to the viral clips has been: What? Ew. Ew!

Maybe it's because I experienced the Subservient Chicken at an early age, or maybe it's because, even before then, I cut my teeth on an anonymous internet full of avatars and roleplayers, where nobody knew you were a dog (or not a dog, as it may be), but I don't find their NPC schtick disturbing, and I don't find the actors to be creepy.  

It doesn't bother me that these women are pretending to be artificial as performance; so do silver statue street buskers and pop-and-lock dancers. It doesn't bother me that they're doing silly human tricks for pay. I know some people consider the uncanny job of NPC streamer to be demeaning, but is there really a difference between "Gang gang" and "Would you like fries with that?" You can argue that neither job should exist, but you can't reasonably single out the one getting paid bank from the comfort of her own home. Trading scripted phrases and faked emotions for money is the basis of a lot of what you'd call legitimate work.

So, to me, the work and the workers say nothing about the world. It's cyberpunk meets service work. What could be more inevitable?

But the buyers… them I wonder about.

Even two decades later, I remember that electrifying feeling of demanding something and seeing it appear.

Yet Subservient Chicken was, ultimately, unreal. And it felt that way; even if you believed there was a live actor doing your bidding in that chicken suit, he was clearly an actor, and he was on a stage, and he even said "No."

I don't know what it feels like to send an actual, bonafide human being — sitting in their bonafide human bedroom or kitchen — a virtual gift to make them say,  *lick lick* Mmm ice cream so good… but I don't think I'd like it.

Through the temporal dislocation that is memory, my sensory recollection of  Subservient Chicken puts me in my childhood basement. But by the time it came out, I was long gone. Perhaps it is because that basement was where I felt the wonders of the internet the most, and Subservient Chicken was definitely a wonder, and a formative memory of What Is The Internet… if a creepy one.