███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ----- Pinned Area ----- For SF Bay Area Art Scene and current going ons: https://artboard.info/ ----- ******* ----- ----- Note Passing ----- @jakewelch Thanks for the nice words my man - RE: red fern - do it !! Say hello to that kid who wanted to have dogs and hunt in the ozarks RE: Steinbeck - read more of em - a lot of the novels are very short, maybe it was more relevant for me growing up near his hometown but I still think you'll like em ----- ******* ----- ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 4.21.2026 Hello! Time flies! 1. I asked a gal to marry me. 2. Work is moving - I feel right where I should be 3. Attention and self directed use of time are all I think about in between Here's a bit about the park where I asked it - It's called Sam Macdonald Park in the santa cruz mountains near Loma Mar in California. It's named after this man who was a teamster and groundskeeper at Stanford University that used his money and influence to promote a childrens hospital and buy land he eventually donated to become a public park when he died. It's my favorite park in California - I've lived here my whole life and I can assert that with confidence. You remember your first book right? The one you read a bunch as a kid and it made you feel grown up and above your reading level, you'd stay up late reading it, you'd try to talk to your friends about it but didn't have the vocabulary or really the understanding of the themes of the book to really explain it right. I just found mine again, I reread it in 5 train commutes to and from work, It's Cannery Row by Steinbeck and it felt like I was saying hello to my younger self. I remember wanting to emulate the main character, it really became an obsession and defined my ideas about just and right. I remember crying reading it - hard in bed, not knowing why. I remember feeling cheated that the sequel he wrote Sweet Thursday felt like a cash grab (knowing this concept as a kid and looking down at a famous author is very funny). If transition or hardship or big events are all around you right now, maybe try to pick up that book you're thinking of soon and say hello to them again. 3.31.2026 Self sabotage through the wrong channel for creative energy is the main cause of my everyday stress and psychological torture. Why do this!? My creative energy is a finite resource. Channeling it into stress, overthinking, or busywork lets me feel like Im doing something creative without the risk of real personal creative peril. But ultimately it just causes feelings of missed opportunity. It feels safe, but its a bad vibe ! What a miserable trick! Here's what I identify to escape and find a way out of it: 1. The torture isn't coming from having too little energy. its coming from having plenty and watching it go to the wrong place. 2. Having acknowledged #1 - You can safely deduce that even redirecting that energy for 5 minutes would benefit you immensely. Reducing the activation energy for that 5 minutes is the goal. 3. There still exists a gap: "what I made today" and "what I'm capable of creatively" becomes this constant psychological problem. 4. I am dedicating too much of my creative self worth to what I get done at my day job as a designer. I should redirect that energy to creative work I have control of - while avoiding phoning in the professional work I am paid to do. 5. Avoid at all costs the idea that the personal creative work you crave to do triggers the perfectionism and avoidance that my day job currently causes. I think these all point toward keeping stakes low in your work - it's the only solution to avoid the burnout and identity destruction. It echos this report I read about Alyssa Liu and the generational need for play in both personal and professional settings to reduce the psychic torture that comes from the nonstop feed and 24/7 news cycle. This is my autonomy centered mind dump on creativity, thanks for reading, hope it resonates! 3.30.2026 I get to my office around 7:45 every monday - I go to the deserted top floor, full of empty desks, to be used monitors, desk chairs, old tshirts printed for events, etc. and sit in the detritus in this specific spot and watch the container ships come in. They usually have 1-2 tug boats bumping them into position to navigate the specific channel under the bay bridge. I think about how my radical gradeschool teacher teaching us about these tug boat drivers and longshoremen starting the 1934 General Strike. I remember seeking out the memorial on Speare st for an extra credit assignment. It's nice to just watch the boats and think about how work was a lot simpler when I used my body for labor. Navigating a tug boat couldn't be much different then being a farmhand right? 3.23.2026 Hello from a month later. UPDATES: Reconnecting with old friends and expressing love. Still cycling a lot. Heatwave was nice for me. Promoted at work. Everyone in my life is healthy and safe. Still rereading The Jest & working on that same meditative drawing (this is the drawing I only work on when I need to figure out a problem or question in my life ("physical production monk mode meditation" is what I call it). Dedicating a lot of time to understanding how to make loops for some videos I want to make https://tinyurl.com/3d8yute5 My time is moving quicker and quicker, more and more busy, requiring effort and commitment to retain creative energy, focus, and direction. That's how it always is though, right? It's common to us all. That connection feels good despite the fear of the quickening pace of it all. 2.24.2026 San Francisco Bay Area artist Kreayshawn has been a small internet proponent longer than I've been aware of the subculture. Her music was big when I was in gradeschool+high school and I really like her and her site. You may remember such hits as GUCCI GUCCI. On the wake of the (non tech and positive) attention the bay area is getting after the olympics, I want to highlight this woman from the bay. I love the bay. https://kreayshawn.com/ 2.17.2026 time flies. The SF teachers strike was successful! Raises and healthcare for the union members. Be well fish. 2.9.2026 Today I left my office to bring my friend a sandwich on the picket line for the SF Teachers union strike. Here he is giving an audio interview. https://www.sfpublicpress.org/teacher-strike-closes-schools-amid-negotiations-over-health-care-costs I swell with pride for him, I am happy I know him well and we talk all the time. The city seems to be behind the teachers and the vibes were really good at City Hall. After, I return to my job and spend 4 hours trying to get some animation interaction working and I succeed. I get news that I received a promotion. I come home and I pick up chinese food on the way and hold mads tight. I ask my friends group chat what that walt whitman idea is about contributing to life and the same friend on the picket line responds immediately with the poem. This is how I feel today, as corny as it is, I haven't thought about this since high school. O Me! O Life! https://poets.org/poem/o-me-o-life Be well fish 2.2.2026 I never interact much with participants in mass movement marches or protests, even when I am one of them. I just want to observe and support and be present. My friend is becoming more and more involved in a group called Usal (https://www.usalproject.com/events/long-slow-days-bike-ride) that does outdoor activity and guided community events mostly in SF, LA, NY. I can't be present for the next slow group ride on the 7th of Feb, 2026 but if you're able and willing you should participate, its really, really fun. Oh he has one of these too, ha! hello @clam_tony! 1.30.2026 For San Francisco dwellers: 1pm at ferry building for a memorial ride for A. Pretti. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/53835107 There's a shorter route that avoids the downtown and meets up in ggp here at conservatory of flowers probably around 2:30-3 1.28.2026 brutal back and forth unfocused and chaotic working weeks. Feel good regardless! Fantastic dune visits every evening, i keep seeing coyotes. In fact, San Francisco has a lot of coyotes, and there is a woman who tracks and records the history, territory disputes and drama of the various coyote packs. https://coyoteyipps.com/territories-population/ worth a read, its really interesting. This lady Janet writes with a lot of passion and fringe interest that I categorize as a true blue San Franciscan. This (https://coyoteyipps.com/2025/08/12/sf-coyote-territorial-map-and-family-situations-to-summer-2025/) is the most updated map and description of the various territories in SF for 2025. 1.25.2026 I have spent a day and a half integrating an are.na (https://www.are.na/dominic-decarlo/scrap-k6m8xpubrkg) page into an ancient script I wrote in college to display images on my website (https://www.dominicdecarlo.com/). It's working better than ever! A younger me would be amazed and today me is pretty happy. This is what it looks like! (https://imgur.com/I586Shd). This original was beautiful, pure javascript with really insightful comments like this one i remember being very proud of: // Durstenfeld shuffle javascript optimization // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Yates_shuffle#The_modern_algorithm function shuffle(array) { for (var i = array.length - 1; i > 0; i--) { var j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1)); var temp = array[i]; array[i] = array[j]; array[j] = temp; } return array; } beautiful and 100% copied from github I made this site in ~2016? using a CMS called IndexExhibit (https://www.indexhibit.org/) maintained by this one dude Jeffery Vaska I would periodically fight with on his FAQ help forum. Love his CMS - I think its so great for my purposes I never want to stop using it! I really want to take a stab at maintaining it and forking it to work with a newer version of PHP. It's almost like a proto-small web CMS with its brutalist aesthetic and super simplistic forum capabilities. I think it'll be my archive site for the rest of my life. 1.20.2026 I live in the middle of San Francisco - almost the exact center. It's really ez to get anywhere on a bike! I spent this entire holiday weekend riding around and observing the city. An excuse to ride my bicycle across town: 1. deliver a gift to a friend 2. sit in the sand and think 3. talk to a friend on the phone and exercise at the same time 4. drink coffee in another neighborhood 5. wave at people, ring your bell to say hello what's your EXCUSE? 1.17.2026 A friend tells me about his client who erased his map. I call and we talk about it for a few hours. I make him laugh, we talk about dying, we talk about it all. I ride my favorite bike to the dunes - I go through the park, I ring my bell at kids in cargo bikes and they wave, I sit in the dunes for 3 hours and watch the surfers with binoculars. I eat half a chocolate bar and take a long time to find a stick to prop my bicycle up out of the sand. A highlight: a dad and his daughter flying a kite. The daughter drops the kite string and it flies off into the horizon, dad sprints into the surf to try and get it. It’s too fast and he just sits watching it, holding his daughter as she cries. They both watch as it goes over the horizon and smile together. I think about if they will remember this forever I ride home, a friend calls to talk to me about her crush and source advice. I get home and Mads has the flu - I find her shivering on the couch. I get her soup and she falls asleep miserable before eating it. While drawing I watch the movie Rebuilding with Josh OConnor and cry and cry. The directors first movie A Love Song made me do the same. 1.14.2026 Dead ends befitting cocktail punks: 1. idle chit chat 2. metabolic rate "messer upers" 3. less than 6-8 sleep hours Im so concerned with how creativity and productivity is stymied, both by my space and place in life! I worry about it when I wake up! Here's the goal: Spending this week diligently keeping a journal of when inspiration strikes and/or when you I do my best work. I think it'll go something like this, for example: If I find I do my best thinking in the shower, I will spend that weekend scrubbing the bathroom clean while thinking. Enhancing the space I think best while also doing good thinking. 1.12.2026 I have been thinking a lot about what I instinctively withhold and the lack of reasoning for it. That which our self-love longs for most is usually what I can assume is given instinctively, but not everyone functions that way. Sometimes its the opposite. How to combat this! Should you combat it? 1.10.2026 Riddles wisely expounded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddles_Wisely_Expounded a few hundred years and an ocean later it becomes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9GVzDrMUj0 "Granny always said that these songs should be sung by an uneducated voice as the ballads themselves were uneducated." this idea of a "grace note" as "[an] unanticipated bend[s] on certain notes" 1.9.2026 Suddenly senior status thrust upon me 1.8.2026 how long can you go without looking at a screen once you wake up? Whats your record? 1.6.2026 bunny hop over patches of sand pedaling into the wind no sunglasses sand in my eyes tears everywhere 1.5.2026 Back on the jest 12.29.2025 Paid many people bills. Supported many, cooked for, and enjoyed the company of friends and family alike. In reference to 12.10.2025, I was outdone in both silliest and goofiest photos, but took home the gold in funniest. ... Thinking about attention: Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TN0OPBK-s this life [gives] you nothing, it only [makes] time pass. EX: replacing with things that don't merely distract but improve and address what we're trying to answer with said distraction - in this way, the attention becomes yours once again and it all finally makes sense in our modern day attention economy. 12.16.2025 It's _______ absolutely in my hands 12.10.2025 We eat chinese food with my parents (and my old) nextdoor neighbors every christmas eve. We've been doing it my whole life its already a good time. Their youngest daughter got into photos last year and has a toy digital camera that assigns a percentage value of "silly" "funny" "goofy" to your photo and this year she made sure I know that we will compete who will get the silliest, the funniest, the goofiest. 12.8.2025 use case and reasoning behind getting a dog: pro 1. Very good dog 2. a companion to share 3. dog as a touchstone and time delineator of where you're at in life con 1. life revolves around dog 2. ??? 12.3.2025 use case and reasoning for an omnium mini cargo bike: pro 1. looks cool 2. carry things to golden gate park con 1. every cyclist in SF will talk to you 11.24.2025 filling up your mind, head, heart, hands, stomach, etc etc 11.20.2025 small internet, small YOU 11.18.2025 I send good mail to anyone who asks. Lovely letters for times of challenge. What message do YOU need?