JETS JOURNAL - #068
February 11, 2025
Hi All!
Here is your weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.
I Found My Old iPod Shuffle
The other day I found an old iPod shuffle at my house and decided to load it with 2GB of classical music I found on The Internet Archive. If your interested in the 100 songs I downloaded, you can find them here.
Lately when I’m on the way to work, I’ll bring my iPod, put in my headphones and start romanticising the shit out of my life. I’ll pay closer attention to the world around me and walk a little slower.
Instead of rushing down the escalator, I’ll watch everyone else go about their days. Slowing down, calms me down, and brings me back to reality.
There’s an interesting power classical music has that heightens even the most mundane moments. It’s also been a good way for me to cut off hearing about fucking bitches, selling drugs and getting money from my usual playlists.
Why I Write
Last week I stumbled upon a fantastic blog post that captured the exact reason I do what I do. I’ve copied and pasted it below for you to check out:
To my seven subscribers by natalie, without restraint
there are eight billion people in the world, 67% of whom are on the internet (in case you don’t have a calculator handy, that’s 5,360,000,000 people). this little corner of the internet represents .000000130597015% of the world’s internet users. and I am so excited about it.
i am tired of media from people who are nothing like me. i crave microblogs, unedited vlogs of you doing your laundry, neighborhood zines, local newspapers, postcards from my friends in other states. i want to absorb and create content & art that feels like a monday morning. i don’t want to know another influencer’s makeup routine, or see another actor’s multimillion-dollar home. i want to read a book by the woman who works at the grocery store. i want a physical recording of a street busker playing the saxophone.
i want raw, unfiltered, don’t-give-a-fuck. to my seven subscribers, i pledge to never be exciting. i pledge to be a reflection of your own humanity. i pledge to be full of faults and make lots of mistakes. thank you for seeing me.
So, with that being said, thank you for seeing me and listening to me rant about whatever I find interesting, I appreciate you.
You Should Start Blogging
If you couldn’t already tell, writing has changed my life. It’s brought a much needed clarity and helped me to understand myself more. I love writing to everyone of you each week, and also writing privately for myself.
I’d love for more people I know to start putting down their own thoughts each week and sharing them on your own little corner of the internet. If you’ve never blogged before, it’s an entirely different experience to traditional social media. It’s much more freeing, and you feel like you can truely express yourself.
If you are interested in blogging, there is a free platform you can use to create your own personal website and update it with your own ramblings on life. It’s called Bear, and it’s one of the easiest website builders you can use to start putting your writing on the internet.
What’s great about bear is that what they give you is the bare minimum, (pun intended) there is nothing flashy, and all the webpages you create are extremely simple. You’re not trying to build the next Facebook, you’re just trying to document a slice of your life, and share it with people who could really appreciate hearing your voice.
If anyone needs help setting up a blog, or a newsletter, reach out, and I will happily help you get started and be your first reader. If you want to get an idea for what Bear blogs look like, check out their discovery page here, and click through some of the top posts. You will soon realise, that this environment is very different from the overly curated nature of Instagram. I’ve also attached a video below for you to watch to learn more about Bear.
How To Do More
Last week I wrote down a little excerpt I found on The Yoga of Writing, and pinned it up next to my computer. It looks like this:
I love this philosophy of doing something instead of nothing. Reframing my mindset, and letting go of expectations around creation, has allowed for much more to flow from me whenever I’m working on something.
Also, if you’re not interested in writing, it doesn’t matter, because you could substitute writing out for literally anything else in your life you’d like to improve at, or start doing more of.
Chaos Is the Natural State of the Universe
It takes effort to bring order into our lives. If you don’t take care of your health, your body will deteoriate faster, and faster. The same goes with keeping a tidy space at home. If you do nothing, naturally chaos will emerge, the dishwasher will start overflowing, your sheets will start smelling, and the pile of clothes in your room will only grow higher and higher.
Understanding this, and accepting that it’s going to take effort and a considerable amount of my energy, makes the task of bringing order into my life, seem like a much more manageable task.
I will share with you in the next few weeks some of the ways I’m creating order, in what was a very chaotic, unpredictable, and often messy life, especially upstairs.
Hope everyone enjoys their week.
Love,
Jet Williams