In the past months, I stopped podcasting, streaming, and coding for great personal reasons, which I will share with you in the future.

While it's crucial to stick to the things you feel you should continue doing, it should be okay to give up, take a break, or slow down when it doesn't make sense to continue doing them anymore or when it's impossible to keep up.

The alternative to periodicity—creating at a constant pace—is what I'll call seasonal creativity, which implies focusing on a specific endeavor for a given period, shipping it, and going dark until the following season.

Over the past few years, I have aimed to send a weekly newsletter, stream at least once a week, and release a monthly podcast episode. I continued sending the newsletter but paused the stream and podcast. Adding video to the podcast made editing and releasing episodes slower, and my reduced time availability made it harder to live stream on YouTube. Instead of producing throughout the year, it might make sense to release content in seasons.

Regardless of your creative pace, you should feel entitled to let your craft aside when life demands it and return to it when you are ready.

Read your writing.
Watch your recordings.
Look at your photos.

With enough time, you'll experience what you made through the spectator's lens.

It’s easy to relax and let things slide once you've been skipping something for a while.

The new normal becomes not doing it.

That’s why you should be careful about letting go of certain good habits you want to cultivate.

Periodicity is everything.

Black Friday prompts us to buy more.

Temporary discounts instill a fear of missing out on deals.

Fast, free shipping and easy returns make online shopping convenient.

Amazon's clever nudge has been to extend the return period for end-of-year purchases until February 6, exactly one month after Three Kings' Day, the Spanish equivalent of December 25th's Santa Claus.

If anything, Black Friday is harvest time for those who wait and save.

Earlier this year, Antonio Banderas and Domingo Sánchez founded Sorhlin Andalucía in Málaga, a cultural space where the Freepik-hosted Upscale conference is taking place this week.

I was surprised to see such a big and well-organized event happening here, in Málaga, my hometown, and I hope this serves as a precedent for other events to be hosted here.

Speaker talks followed Linus Ekenstam's opening.

The overall sentiment is that current AI offerings allow creatives to create faster, better, cheaper, and easier, and we should find responsible ways to use AI.

Martin LeBlanc (Freepik) believes creating with AI still requires creativity, but creating is easier than before.

"The industry is [currently] focused on faster and cheaper output, not breakthroughs," says Hugo Barbera (HumAIn). "We are settling for replication more than transformation."

Some startups that presented productize AI to automate specific workflows, such as portfolio creation (Journo) or face anonymization (Piktid).

Nick Coronges, R/GA's CTO, feels that AI isn't disruptive (yet), and we're creating the same stuff as before, just faster and cheaper. Coronges works with well-known brands, and I loved their Google Android rebrand, which surfaces some of AI's yet-to-come transformational uses. R/GA developed a set of polymorphic AI models capable of creating infinite Android design configurations with "fixed structural rules [and] open-ended outputs within those constraints." Nick believes 2025 will be the year of AI rebrands.

George Eid (Area 17 Founder) warns us about perpetuating bias, loneliness, laziness, and technology's limitations and misleading nature—privacy, security, equity, disinformation, and well-being are in danger.

Before the end of the morning session, Justin Hackney (EleveLabs) asks if, when a creation moves you, it matters whether the artifact was created with AI, which brought back Seth Godin's saying that what matters is impact, not effort.

A fundamental transformation is coming.

I've published a weekly drawing and mini-essay for the past 281 weeks since July 9, 2019—five years, four months, and ten days (or 1960 days).

My writing themes and tone evolve, yet the gist is that I continue to practice.

This writing series, together with my journal, is where I think and develop ideas; what's yours?

Over the years, I've drawn in sketchbooks of many makes and sizes.
 In concept, I love the consistency of sticking to a single paper type and size.
Yet exploring different brands and sketchbooks is required to find which paper and format you enjoy best.

Each sketchbook suits a different type of drawing and moment, some for travel, some for home, some for watercolor, etc., which means I have multiple unfinished sketchbooks.

To avoid checking each of my sketchbooks individually to know which is which, I recently sorted and tagged them with rounded color stickers that signal their status: red for completed, green for ongoing, and yellow for empty. 
On top of the color sticker, I name sketchbooks serially, starting with the year I started, followed by the sketchbook number in that year, e.g., 2024.02 for the second sketchbook I started in 2024.

I have sketchbooks of various brands—Moleskine, Stillman & Birn, Hahnemuhle—and sizes—A3, A4, and A5—organized in a tiny shelf on wheels, which also houses my Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 printer.

Most of my sketchbook pages are scanned and stored on the cloud, and many of their drawings are edited and published, but many still need to be.

The point is to minimize the creative friction by seeing at a glance which sketchbooks I can draw in.

Major life changes shift your mindset and focus.

No matter how much you try, it's not something you can predict and accurately plan for.

It's like writing non-fiction; you can do all the research you want, but the best way to learn about it is to perform a real immersion.

To learn and figure out your opinion about things, to expose what you think about a given topic, to justify and explain your point of view, and to tell others why you think you are right.

I was thinking of relatives and friends to whom I may want to explain specific things—technical, factual, or conceptual—and how an online essay about it, a "one-pager," could be consumed individually by multiple people.

In the end, the point of any write-up is to spread an idea and have others reflect on it.

A web link becomes a shortcut to a brief explanation, as I did last week explaining how I date my sketches.¹

When is 10/8/12?
Is it October 8, 2021?
Is it August 10, 2012?
Or is it August 12, 2010?

I grew up in Spain and used to see and write down dates as day, month, and year—say, 15/10/24 for the fifteenth of October 2024.

In the US, the month goes first. 10/15/24 also represents October 15, 2024.

Digital systems put the year first, then format dates in human-readable forms adapted to regional patterns. This means you'll see month/day/year in the United States region or day/month/year for Europe.¹

For illustration, you can think of programming languages using the letters d for day (15), m for month, y for year, and other letters for other datetime components. These codes allow programs to display present, past, and future dates to humans.

I caption sketches by hand and prefix the name of digital scans with yymmdd²—the year, month, and day when I draw them, which lets me browse drawings chronologically.

This often confuses people because dates appear flipped.³ 10.01.18 may be interpreted as January 10, 2018, in Spain and October 1, 2018, in the US, whereas it represents January 18, 2010.

Next time you see one of my drawings, remember it's year, month, and day.

The issue is that, by default, Laravel came with DB_HOST as 127.0.0.1 but MySQL 9 will reject that host in favor of localhost.

If everything else is configured correctly, simply set your DB_HOST to localhost, and you should be good to go.

macOS Sequoia introduces new features to help you be more productive and creative on Mac. With the latest Continuity feature, iPhone Mirroring, you can access your entire iPhone on Mac. It’s easy to tile windows to quickly create your ideal workspace, and you can even see what you’re about to share while presenting with Presenter Overlay. A big update to Safari features Distraction Control, Highlights, and a redesigned Reader, making it easy to get things done while you browse the web. macOS Sequoia also brings text effects and emoji Tapbacks to Messages, Math Notes to Calculator, the ability to plan a hike in Maps, and so much more.

iPhone Mirroring sounds extremely useful.

Hits the Upgrade Now button.

If you do something once, why not do it twice?

If you skip something once, why not skip it twice?

We can use repetition in our favor.

Do more of what you want and less of what you don't.

Avoid the second mistake.

Do you want to solve ten problems at once?
Good luck.

It's better to break them down and be selective about the bits and pieces you can tackle in a given timeframe. Pick one and get started.

With a reduced scope, it's easier to focus on whatever you want to work on during your 168 hours.

Blogging every day is easy if you just do it. What's even easier is not to blog every day, to let time pass, and make a habit of not writing in public.

My journal frees me up from worrying about what I put in writing. Words flow, even when I know they aren't particularly meaningful. I want the text to flow to clarify my thoughts and generate ideas, to capture facts and memories, and to communicate and inspire—that's what matters.

I prefer it this way. Instead of overthinking what to write, I can review my writing later, analyzing and selecting the best parts.

Writing is a tool that serves many purposes. What will you use it for?

I grew up tinkering with Windows computers and learned how to type without looking at the keyboard as a kid.

I got my first Apple laptop¹ in early 2011 and bought my second in 2015, this time with a US keyboard to write and code more efficiently.

As I expected, the decision to go for a US keyboard made me a happier coder as, apart from providing a smooth writing experience in English, it is optimized for programming.

For several years, I would swap between English and Spanish with a key shortcut when I needed to write in my mother tongue. The power to type in both languages with the same keyboard quickly became a nightmare: numerous characters change location and aren't physically there, which makes it hard to type in Castellano. No eñe and no tilde.

Let's look at the following text for a second.

¿Tendrías dos euros (2€) en monedas pequeñas?
«Creo que sí». Respondió ella.
¡Gracias!

How would you type this with a US keyboard?

The text uses the euro sign (€), the funny n we call eñe with its tilde, the acute accent over the vowels (áéíóú), opening question and exclamation marks (¿? and ¡!), and citation characters («») used in journalism for quotes—most of which don't show up in the US keyboard.

I recently challenged myself not to rely on the Spanish keyboard altogether.²

Were there key combinations for these Spanish characters in the US keyboard and, if so, why not use them instead of swapping my computer's language to fake I had a different keyboard in front of me?

After a Google search and a few ChatGPT 4o questions, I found out the answer was yes, assembled the following cheatsheet, and started practicing.

ñ — Option + n → n
á — Option + e → a (same for é, í, ó & ú)
¿ — Shift + Option + ?
¡ — Option + 1
€ — Shift + Option + 2
» — Shift + Option + \
« — Option + \

Now I could use the Spanish characters I needed with a US keyboard on macOS without switching languages.

To my surprise, it took me less than a month to get used to these shortcuts and get rid of something that bothered me for several years.

There isn't time to do all the things you want. That's why I try to find those moments when there's no need to do those things; no deadline, no rush, no deliverables.

Yet, there come periods when none of that's possible.

What do you do then?

You stick to the plan. You push a tiny bit to get it done.

There will come times, hopefully in the near future, when you'll be able to go back to normal.

reMarkable released the reMarkable Paper Pro, a brand-new device with an 11.8” color display. The latency is down to 12 milliseconds from 21 milliseconds in the older reMarkable 2, which only featured black, white, and grayscale colors. Storage is up to 64GB from 8 GB.

It's a bit pricier than the previous model.

If you, like me, have the reMarkable 2, I don't think it is worth an upgrade. But I'll have to get one on my hands to know for sure.

I maintain a spreadsheet with my subscriptions. That includes online services, insurance, and other recurrent payments. The list is ever-growing, and I review it every couple of months to see what I can cancel or downgrade.

These are some of the services that are doing a great job of locking me in.

Apple wants to sync my photos, videos, and backups to iCloud.

Dropbox wants my file library.

Amazon Blink and Eufy want to store my recordings remotely.

Spotify wants to rent my music library.¹

Zapier wants me to continue automating workflows with their zaps.

Descript and Riverside want me to continue recording and editing videos and podcasts.

Grammarly wants to fix my grammar.

Adobe wants me to edit media.

In Kevin Kelly's words, we pay for access, not ownership. Lifetime subscriptions are rare—catch them if you can.

So, as long as I do these things and find no free or cheaper alternative, I'll have to continue subscribing.

There's no such thing as a bullet-proof system. Everything under the right (or the wrong) conditions can fail.

And those are the situations you can't plan for and need to adapt to when the time comes.

These situations are the unknown unknowns, for which you can prepare but won't be able to work on a solution til they happen.

The only domains that work are q.com, x.com, and z.com.

Talking to a smart device is different than pressing a switch on the wall or dimming the lights with your phone, even when the outcome is similar.

Ok, Google. Lights on.

You can control the lights in a smart home through voice interactions, analog controls, or digital interfaces.

Each interface exposes a series of options that inform our behavior. For instance, a smartphone app lets us dim the lights, whereas certain analog switches provide binary control, on or off.

Tools change our behavior. In the long run, we'll default to the frictionless option.

Hey, Siri. Switch off the lights.

I always feel my posts and journal entries could be more polished, but done is better than the ever-elusive perfect.

It only takes me a few minutes to write a couple hundred words capturing what's on my mind—what I did, thought, felt, or details I might forget tomorrow.

Writing helps me understand my thoughts and make sense of my life, ensuring I don't lose important details.

When I revisit my journal, past worries fade, forgotten stories resurface, and I see how my opinions have evolved.

The benefits of writing daily and revisiting my archives are invaluable.

The same ink strokes can represent multiple different objects. Add a bit of watercolor, and the possibilities are reduced.

What the eye identifies as a mandarin orange, mainly because of the color, wouldn't be so obvious without the brush strokes.

Color adds an extra dimension to my drawings.

Yet the key is to get proportion and light right, which I always do with microfiber ink pens.

Only then does watercolor (or shading) add information and help the viewer understand what they are looking at.

Under pressure, getting something meaningful done is tricky unless the steps are clearly defined and we know how to follow them.

That's why we need to reserve time for our craft regularly, even if we don't know what we'll end up using it for.

Quick. Short. Immediate.

Easy. Summarized. Highlighted.

Content is digested for us on social media; then, we digest short impulses.

We only get the gist and can't draw unbiased conclusions.

The alternative?

Consume less, long-form content, and deep dive.

"No such thing as writer's block," says Seth Godin, and he couldn't be more right.

It may not be your best writing, but all you have to do is sit and write. Give it enough time, and something good will come.

I enjoyed learning about Disney's sodium vapor background removal process, which is used in movies such as Mary Poppins (1964), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), and Pete’s Dragon (1977).

This method works much better than green and blue chroma keys, but as the video experiment shows, it's much more challenging to achieve.

This site with Machine Learning Challenges (deep-ml.com) looks really promising to learn about foundational concepts.

"Willpower becomes a habit," says Charless Duhigg, "by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives."

Routines work the same way the tortoise beat the hare: by steadily working towards the finish line without missing a day, except there's no finish line.