Stress

I don't know if I have the energy to write a blog post. I got up at dawn and moved house, sent a Patternflow to someone in Italy who'd reached out saying they'd put it to good use, and did all sorts of other odd jobs too. The Christmas tree, yesterday the technician said there's absolutely no way at this budget, so it got torn up and I did that as well. In the middle of all this I keep asking around about the trademark filing, and I got an update on a design-related lawsuit that's going on separately, so I end up thinking about that too, and it's just too hectic.

The internet at the new place won't be connected until next Wednesday. The desktop there has Claude Code on it, holding all the Patternflow material and its context, so things are going to get pretty hard. On top of that, the startup support plan for Claude Code now has a weekly limit it didn't have before, which makes my head hurt even more. I'll have to cut the tokens for experiments way down. Too bad.

I remember the last blog post being full of pretty hopeful stuff, but since then my mood has stayed down at the bottom the whole time. Now and then there were good moments, like rain in a drought, but overall it wasn't a happy stretch. To get ready for the move, and since it had gotten cold anyway, I took the mosquito net down early, and then a mosquito whined all night, which was annoying too.

Anyway, writing more of that probably won't help, and I don't have the energy to remember it, so let me just unpack the workshop I ran yesterday. I held a Patternflow workshop for the very first time. It wasn't the full kind of workshop I was hoping for a few months ago, starting from soldering, but we went through learning how to use a Patternflow that's already built, and then using it to play your own patterns.

I ran it for the heads of the companies in residence at the Seoul Design Startup Center, small, 5 people including me. Up front there was the big space with desks and chairs they usually use for seminar-type events, but I didn't want to do it there. As it happened there was some odd, sofa-like furniture at the back, so I turned that into a bit of a playground and we huddled together and had fun with it. At first I wanted everyone to take their shoes off and sit up on top, but there might have been a foot smell issue, so I dropped that.

It had been almost a year since the last workshop I ran, during the graduation show at Hongik's visual communication design department last year. But maybe, thankfully, the experience from doing so many of them hadn't gone anywhere, because it went much more smoothly than I expected. It could also be because it's Patternflow, and I know it too well. For me it's a field where there was never any need to memorize anything in the first place. I had to open the website and explain things, but the laptop's Wi-Fi was unstable, so I just talked while picturing it. I could explain it so easily, as if I were wearing smart glasses with the screen right in front of me. Not that I've ever worn smart glasses!

Everyone followed along really well and said it was fun, so I felt really proud. Doing it, I could also feel that Patternflow is designed to be fairly sturdy, which was nice. Almost half a year got ground into it, so of course it should be, mm-hm. The reaction was really good, and we decided to hold another workshop in about 2 weeks. It'd be nice if I end up holding them regularly like this. After a few, once everyone's done it, I should try one that starts from soldering too. Ah, we talked about running it that way for students at the university over winter break, will that really happen? They've probably forgotten. Let's not get my hopes up.

There's nothing new, really. I'm not sure which direction to go either. The will to try anything has shrunk a lot too. It could be because there's been so much going on lately, but from some point on, Patternflow definitely stopped. I don't know how to get it moving again. If I knew, I'd have done it already.

The things I don't want to do keep piling up. A few of the Patternflows I built are broken and need fixing, and the Christmas tree too, I know it's a really good opportunity, but it's so much stress. The more time I spend with the person who gave me the opportunity, the surer I am that they're a much bigger deal than I thought, and that they really do want to help me grow. But call it a difference in temperament… there's a lot where we don't line up, and it's really draining.

When on earth is the funding money going to be paid out, it already feels like 3 weeks have gone by. As soon as I get the money I'll order, build and ship, fast. I think that's when I'll be able to do something new. Honestly, if I really wanted to, I'd do it right now, so I guess I don't want to.

The Patternflow posters and goods too, I'll never make money if I just pretend to do it like I am now. Not a single order. I didn't promote it at all, and even I haven't looked at the products I'm selling, so it's the obvious result. Besides that, the experiments I ran because I have to make money somehow, and a few I tried out of curiosity, all failed. Maybe because I ran them only with AI. Or the sample might be too small, but now there's a weekly limit, so I can't anyway.

I'm tired. I'm going to wrap up, go home, rest completely, and just sleep. The internet's cut off anyway, so should I use that as an excuse to rest entirely, Patternflow, the Christmas tree, all of it? I know I won't, but still.