Notes and thoughts of myself, every now and thenhttps://justaspark.blog/enhttps://justaspark.blog/p/Dihj8XS056https://justaspark.blog/p/Dihj8XS056Hello WorldSat, 29 Aug 2026 08:47:20 GMT<p>Hello World</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/jMlljgo9gwhttps://justaspark.blog/p/jMlljgo9gwFog sat on the street until almost noon. Took one photo the whole day and it's the only thing I made that I'd keep.Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:40:00 GMT<p>Fog sat on the street until almost noon. Took one photo the whole day and it's the only thing I made that I'd keep.</p>weatherhttps://justaspark.blog/p/QtuHB-1uTIhttps://justaspark.blog/p/QtuHB-1uTIRain all afternoon. Didn't leave the desk once and don't regret a minute of it.Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:10:00 GMT<p>Rain all afternoon. Didn't leave the desk once and don't regret a minute of it.</p>quietweatherhttps://justaspark.blog/p/2lVmC4wnTEhttps://justaspark.blog/p/2lVmC4wnTESpent the morning rereading things I wrote three years ago. The strange part isn't that they're bad, most of them are fine, it's that I can't remember being the person who thought them worth writing down. Somewhere between then and now the thing I was anxious about quietly…Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:12:00 GMT<p>Spent the morning rereading things I wrote three years ago. The strange part isn't that they're bad, most of them are fine, it's that I can't remember being the person who thought them worth writing down. Somewhere between then and now the thing I was anxious about quietly stopped mattering, and nothing arrived to replace it. I think that's what progress actually feels like from the inside: not arrival, just the slow disappearance of an old worry.</p>writinghttps://justaspark.blog/the-list-of-questions-i-cant-answer-yethttps://justaspark.blog/the-list-of-questions-i-cant-answer-yetI keep one plain text file that I've never deleted a line from. It isn't a journal and it isn't a to-do list. It's a list of questions I don't have answers to, and after four years it's the only document I own that gets more interesting the longer it gets. Everything else I…Mon, 24 Aug 2026 23:40:00 GMT<p>I keep one plain text file that I've never deleted a line from. It isn't a journal and it isn't a to-do list. It's a list of questions I don't have answers to, and after four years it's the only document I own that gets more interesting the longer it gets. Everything else I write shrinks with time.</p> <p>I've been asked how it works a few times, usually by people who suspect they'd like something similar and don't want to invent it from scratch. So here it is, in more words than a note deserves.</p> <h2 id="how-it-started">How it started</h2> <p>Badly, and by accident. I was reading through old notes looking for something else and noticed that most of what I'd written down was answers — decisions I'd already made, restated so I'd feel settled about them. The questions had gone unrecorded, which meant I had no way of knowing which ones I'd actually resolved and which ones I'd just gotten tired of.</p> <p>So I started a file. One question per line, no dates, no tags, no app with a nice icon. Adding a line takes about eight seconds, which is the only reason the habit survived.</p> <blockquote> <p>A question you're willing to write down is a question you've stopped pretending you've settled.</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="what-earns-a-place-on-it">What earns a place on it</h2> <p>Not everything. A question goes on the list if it meets roughly four conditions, which I only worked out in hindsight:</p> <ul> <li>I can state it in one sentence without a preamble.</li> <li>Nobody I've asked has given me an answer that closed it.</li> <li>It would change something about how I work or live if it were answered.</li> <li>I'm still slightly embarrassed not to know.</li> </ul> <p>The last one does most of the filtering. Embarrassment is a reliable signal that a question is close to something I care about, and unreliable at almost everything else.</p> <aside>There's a second file for questions I've answered. I open it perhaps twice a year. The answers are mostly boring, which I've decided is a good sign.</aside> <h3 id="on-not-organising-it">On not organising it</h3> <p>I've tried sorting the list by theme twice and abandoned it both times. The value is in the collisions: a question about work sitting directly above a question about a friendship, with no category to keep them apart. Sorting removes exactly the thing I keep the file for.</p> <h2 id="the-part-that-surprised-me">The part that surprised me</h2> <p>Questions don't get answered so much as they stop applying. I went back through the first year expecting to find resolutions and instead found abandonment: perhaps a fifth were answered outright, and the rest had quietly become irrelevant because I'd changed jobs, or changed my mind, or the situation that produced them had dissolved on its own.</p> <p>That's the argument for keeping the file in something dumb and durable. Mine is one line per question in a folder that syncs, and appending happens from wherever I am:</p> <pre><code>q() { echo "$*" >> ~/notes/questions.txt } # q why does reviewing my own writing feel like a chore </code></pre> <p>Four lines of shell, no schema, and the whole thing is greppable with <code>grep -n</code> when I want to see what I was worried about in a given stretch. If I'd built something nicer I'd have stopped using it by spring.</p> <p>The list is at 212 lines. I don't expect to finish it, and I'd be suspicious of myself if I ever did.</p>writingnighthttps://justaspark.blog/p/otNq-VCnfhhttps://justaspark.blog/p/otNq-VCnfhA good bookshop is a search engine that occasionally argues with you.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:30:00 GMT<p>A good bookshop is a search engine that occasionally argues with you.</p>bookshttps://justaspark.blog/p/6VNHuL347yhttps://justaspark.blog/p/6VNHuL347yTwo hours debugging. The bug was a comma.Sat, 22 Aug 2026 15:05:00 GMT<p>Two hours debugging. The bug was a comma.</p>codehttps://justaspark.blog/p/ZelAVNwKrGhttps://justaspark.blog/p/ZelAVNwKrGStarted keeping a list of questions I can't answer yet. It's the only document I've ever kept that gets more interesting the longer it gets. Everything else I write shrinks.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:05:00 GMT<p>Started keeping a list of questions I can't answer yet. It's the only document I've ever kept that gets more interesting the longer it gets. Everything else I write shrinks.</p>writinghttps://justaspark.blog/p/Ae1gdx3IJ0https://justaspark.blog/p/Ae1gdx3IJ0Someone asked what this site is for. Nothing, really. It's a place to put sentences that don't need to go anywhere else, which turns out to be most of them.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:30:00 GMT<p>Someone asked what this site is for. Nothing, really. It's a place to put sentences that don't need to go anywhere else, which turns out to be most of them.</p>quietwritinghttps://justaspark.blog/p/5UZlJnS89Bhttps://justaspark.blog/p/5UZlJnS89BWalked the long way home because the short way had nothing worth looking at. Small tax, worth paying.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:20:00 GMT<p>Walked the long way home because the short way had nothing worth looking at. Small tax, worth paying.</p>quiethttps://justaspark.blog/p/yo7eLlqyUGhttps://justaspark.blog/p/yo7eLlqyUGBought a notebook I don't need. The paper is the wrong weight for the pen I own, which I knew before paying.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:45:00 GMT<p>Bought a notebook I don't need. The paper is the wrong weight for the pen I own, which I knew before paying.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/xGMN76xNARhttps://justaspark.blog/p/xGMN76xNARThere is a specific quality of quiet that only happens after 1am, once even the building has stopped adjusting itself. I do my best thinking in it and my worst decisions.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:20:00 GMT<p>There is a specific quality of quiet that only happens after 1am, once even the building has stopped adjusting itself. I do my best thinking in it and my worst decisions.</p>nightquiethttps://justaspark.blog/four-years-of-bread-badly-measuredhttps://justaspark.blog/four-years-of-bread-badly-measuredI have made something like two hundred loaves and I still cannot tell you the hydration of my standard dough. I could work it out. I have never bothered, and at this point not bothering has become a small point of principle. The measuring years For the first eighteen months I…Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:15:00 GMT<p>I have made something like two hundred loaves and I still cannot tell you the hydration of my standard dough. I could work it out. I have never bothered, and at this point not bothering has become a small point of principle.</p> <h2 id="the-measuring-years">The measuring years</h2> <p>For the first eighteen months I weighed everything. Flour to the gram, water to the gram, salt to the tenth of a gram on a jeweller's scale I bought specifically and have since given away. I kept a spreadsheet. There was a column for ambient temperature and a column for how long the bulk ferment ran and a column, I am slightly embarrassed to say, for a subjective crumb score out of ten.</p> <p>The loaves were fine. Consistently fine. They were also, without exception, worse than the loaves I make now with a bowl, a guess, and my hands.</p> <h2 id="what-the-numbers-were-actually-for">What the numbers were actually for</h2> <p>It took me a long time to work out that the spreadsheet wasn't teaching me to bake. It was teaching me to defer. Every time a loaf came out badly I had somewhere to put the blame that wasn't me — the flour was different, the kitchen was cold, the starter was sluggish — and every time one came out well I had a row of numbers to credit instead of anything I'd learned.</p> <p>What actually improved things was the opposite move. I stopped recording and started paying attention. Not to measurements, to the dough: whether it pulled back when I pushed it, whether it felt slack or tight against the side of the bowl, how it smelled at hour four versus hour six.</p> <aside>The one number I kept is oven temperature, because my oven lies by about fifteen degrees and I have no intention of learning to feel that.</aside> <h3 id="the-thing-nobody-tells-you">The thing nobody tells you</h3> <p>A recipe is a description of what happened once, in someone else's kitchen, with their flour and their water and their hands. It is not an instruction. Treating it as one is why my early loaves were identical and mediocre: I was reproducing a description rather than making bread.</p> <h2 id="four-years-in">Four years in</h2> <p>I now do roughly this. Flour into the bowl until it looks like enough. Water until it comes together wetter than seems wise. Salt, a pinch that I have thrown maybe six hundred times and could not describe. Fold it a few times over the first couple of hours, whenever I walk past. Leave it until it has clearly done something. Shape it, chill it overnight, bake it hot.</p> <p>That description is useless to you, which is the point. It took two hundred loaves to compress and it will not decompress into your kitchen.</p> <blockquote> <p>The recipe was never the variable. I was.</p> </blockquote> <p>The loaves are better than they were. More to the point, making them is no longer an experiment I'm running on myself. It's just something I do on a Sunday, badly measured, and it works.</p>bakinghttps://justaspark.blog/p/AYW1fd_xXYhttps://justaspark.blog/p/AYW1fd_xXYThird loaf this month, first one I'd serve to someone else. The recipe is the one everybody uses, so the variable was never the recipe.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:40:00 GMT<p>Third loaf this month, first one I'd serve to someone else. The recipe is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">the one everybody uses</a>, so the variable was never the recipe.</p>bakinghttps://justaspark.blog/p/QKTiLhK_A9https://justaspark.blog/p/QKTiLhK_A9Every plan I make for the summer assumes a version of me with more energy than the one writing it down.Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:05:00 GMT<p>Every plan I make for the summer assumes a version of me with more energy than the one writing it down.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/aZ8FCzdzAkhttps://justaspark.blog/p/aZ8FCzdzAkThrew out the draft and kept one sentence. Good trade.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 21:10:00 GMT<p>Threw out the draft and kept one sentence. Good trade.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/mqDWPk9mOlhttps://justaspark.blog/p/mqDWPk9mOlCold snap out of nowhere. The window fogs from the inside now, which makes the street look like a memory of itself.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:30:00 GMT<p>Cold snap out of nowhere. The window fogs from the inside now, which makes the street look like a memory of itself.</p>quietweatherhttps://justaspark.blog/p/B-rfKCUiSzhttps://justaspark.blog/p/B-rfKCUiSzNobody warns you that the hard part of a quiet month is explaining it afterwards.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:00:00 GMT<p>Nobody warns you that the hard part of a quiet month is explaining it afterwards.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/7_QZPpHT2Vhttps://justaspark.blog/p/7_QZPpHT2VLong train, no signal, one book. The best afternoon I've had in weeks and I did nothing to earn it.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:40:00 GMT<p>Long train, no signal, one book. The best afternoon I've had in weeks and I did nothing to earn it.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/qK_HujlJmEhttps://justaspark.blog/p/qK_HujlJmERewrote the footer of this site for the fourth time. Nobody has ever mentioned the footer.Sat, 20 Jun 2026 22:05:00 GMT<p>Rewrote the footer of this site for the fourth time. Nobody has ever mentioned the footer.</p>https://justaspark.blog/what-i-stopped-measuringhttps://justaspark.blog/what-i-stopped-measuringFor about three years I tracked things. Not obsessively — I want to be clear that this was never a spreadsheet-at-4am situation — but steadily, and across more of my life than I'd have admitted to at the time. Words written. Hours worked. Books finished. Kilometres. A sleep…Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:50:00 GMT<p>For about three years I tracked things. Not obsessively — I want to be clear that this was never a spreadsheet-at-4am situation — but steadily, and across more of my life than I'd have admitted to at the time. Words written. Hours worked. Books finished. Kilometres. A sleep score from a device that had no business assigning one.</p> <p>I've stopped nearly all of it, and I've been trying to work out what I actually learned, because "tracking is bad" is not it.</p> <h2 id="what-measuring-is-good-at">What measuring is good at</h2> <p>It is very good at one specific thing: telling you that your impression of yourself is wrong.</p> <p>Every single time I started measuring something, the first two weeks were useful, and the reason was always the same. I thought I read more than I did. I thought I wrote more evenly than I did. I thought the bad weeks were rare and they were not rare. A number is an excellent argument against a story you've been telling yourself, and most of us are telling ourselves several.</p> <h2 id="what-it-is-bad-at">What it is bad at</h2> <p>Everything after those two weeks.</p> <p>Once the correction has landed, the number stops informing and starts steering. This is the part I underestimated. I did not consciously decide to write shorter, easier sentences to keep a daily word count up — but the count went up and the writing got worse, and it took an embarrassingly long time to connect those two facts.</p> <ul> <li>The metric replaced the thing it was standing in for.</li> <li>Days the metric couldn't see stopped feeling like they counted.</li> <li>I got better at the measurement and no better at the work.</li> </ul> <aside>The sleep score was the clearest case. On nights it told me I'd slept badly, I felt worse than on nights I'd genuinely slept badly and didn't know it.</aside> <h3 id="the-two-week-rule">The two-week rule</h3> <p>So here's the only rule I've kept. When I suspect my sense of something is off, I measure it for two weeks. Then I stop, whatever the numbers are doing, and keep whatever the correction was.</p> <p>It sounds arbitrary. It isn't, quite: two weeks is long enough to break an illusion and short enough that nothing has time to reorganise itself around the number.</p> <h2 id="what-i-still-count">What I still count</h2> <p>Two things. Money, because it's genuinely a number and pretending otherwise is just expensive. And loaves of bread, because the count has no bearing on how I bake and I like knowing it.</p> <blockquote> <p>Everything worth doing eventually stops being measurable, and the measuring is what tells you when you've arrived.</p> </blockquote> <p>Everything else I've let go, and the honest report is that I have no idea whether I read more or less than I did three years ago. That used to bother me. It doesn't now.</p>writinghttps://justaspark.blog/p/eFoLz0jJwMhttps://justaspark.blog/p/eFoLz0jJwMWoke at five for no reason and watched the light arrive from the wrong side of the room.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:20:00 GMT<p>Woke at five for no reason and watched the light arrive from the wrong side of the room.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/yJj3Oenqlkhttps://justaspark.blog/p/yJj3OenqlkA friend described their job in one sentence and I've been quietly jealous of the clarity all week.Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:15:00 GMT<p>A friend described their job in one sentence and I've been quietly jealous of the clarity all week.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/jLXAICCYrJhttps://justaspark.blog/p/jLXAICCYrJMoved the desk two feet to the left and the whole room reads differently. Cheapest change I've made all year.Sat, 30 May 2026 11:35:00 GMT<p>Moved the desk two feet to the left and the whole room reads differently. Cheapest change I've made all year.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/Pz76aW0noIhttps://justaspark.blog/p/Pz76aW0noIKept a note open for six days without adding to it. Some sentences want a week before they'll finish.Thu, 21 May 2026 16:25:00 GMT<p>Kept a note open for six days without adding to it. Some sentences want a week before they'll finish.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/RGdIeibWAVhttps://justaspark.blog/p/RGdIeibWAVFirst warm evening. Everyone in the neighbourhood outside at once, like a rule had been lifted.Tue, 12 May 2026 20:40:00 GMT<p>First warm evening. Everyone in the neighbourhood outside at once, like a rule had been lifted.</p>https://justaspark.blog/p/deki5GGGvHhttps://justaspark.blog/p/deki5GGGvHStarted this site properly. No plan for it, which is the plan.Tue, 05 May 2026 13:00:00 GMT<p>Started this site properly. No plan for it, which is the plan.</p>