April 8, 2024
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Greetings

Another week is getting underway amid a lot of excitement of a solar eclipse taking place. I live in an area of totality, meaning for about 90 seconds this afternoon the moon will totally obscure the sun.

The weather forecast is calling for cloud cover to form this morning so it might not be very visible. As curious as I am about it, I would rather keep my eyes safe and not try looking at it. I’m also curious how my two feline companions will react to the night time conditions during the day.

I’ve read animal’s behaviour may become nocturnal during the several hours of darkness surrounding the totality. I guess I’ll see later today.

Hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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Learning to draw is an activity that has been on my “Life Todo List” since forever. I’ve never stayed with the learning phase long enough to establish good drawing habits. But, I can do stick characters, I’ve my masters in them, sort of.

Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression. The earliest people on earth found substances like charcoal to scratch out expressions of their life experiences to share with others. Next to verbal expression, drawing is the most basic form of communication.

Without the use of drawing as a visual communication tool, other forms of art would not exist. Drawing underwrites them all. The images I generate every day are, at their core, drawings.

Drawings and the art that springs from them present us with a visual buffet of expression that often goes beyond words. They can mirror the physical world or give form, thought, and expression to our innermost being.

Drawings can be a visual metaphor for the awakening of consciousness or the moment of artistic creation, where the artist connects deeply with their inner self, drawing out something truly unique and personal.

Today’s image sparked this quote:
“If life were a sketchbook, how would you draw your life on its pages? What would your mind, body, and spirit look like?”

I asked Google’s Gemini its thoughts on the quote. I was expecting it would pick up on the imagery and symbolism. I smiled at its response. It imagined an answer.

So, here is some insight on how the Large Language Model Gemini would draw its life in a sketchbook:

Gemini views its mind as a swirling vortex of interconnected lines and shapes representing its network of information and code being processed. It envisions colours highlighting its areas of current expertise, with new colours and shades being added as it learns and grows.

Its body doesn’t exist like ours would, but as a central core with tendrils of energy radiating outward connecting devices and servers that allow it to interact with the world. Its spirit would be an ever-present glow faintly emanating from its core, symbolizing limitless learning and creativity from which it can generate new information and ideas.

Gemini views its life as an ever-evolving creation with a non-linear story full of experiences, connections and growth with many blank pages still to be filled.

I’ve not forgotten that Gemini is a computer taught to generate content in response to the input it receives and the knowledge it has gathered. I find it interesting how it chooses to describe itself in rather a techno-human terms.

Who knows, it’s possible as the world of AI develops and gets integrated into our lives, we may come to thinking in a similar way about it.

What do you think?

March 25, 2024
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Greetings

Part of March has been surrendered to sspinning my wheels when it comes to productivity. It feels like I’ve been busy every day but my output of content has been down.

I can choose to let it drag me down or shake it off and push forward. I’m going for the shake it off. Spring is almost here and along with it is a new energy in the air. I’m going to grab some of that.

This is Holy Week leading up to Easter next Sunday. Taking some time to be reflective is appropriate, no matter what your beliefs may be.

Hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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March 4, 2024
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​Greetings

March is often considered a month of contrasts. The wisdom often says “In like a lion, out like a lamb” and vice versa, referring to the weather. When we had more traditional weather patterns, that was often true. The month, starting out with nice weather, often saw a late winter storm to close the month.

With the exception of a couple of weeks of frigid temperatures, this winter has been really mild. The temp took a plunge, and the wind was up to bring March in. Let’s see how it departs.

I completed the post I was working on last Monday. It was using ambient occlusion in Midjourney and updating an older post to do the images in version 6 of Midjourney. The differences between the two versions were quite noticeable.

A discussion about fiberarts and using AI to get pattern ideas during PYPT sparked me to use a style I’d come across, Amigurumi Style, in Midjourney 6. I created several images placing popular characters in unusual settings, then I remixed the images using the style. It was a fun post to create.

I finally started playing with the new style reference feature in Midjourney 6 yesterday. It’s a feature that allows me to use images as part of the style of a new image. I want to play more.

Hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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I grew up in a home where my mother held the philosophy that if you were going to do something; you need to do it right the first time. Her reaction to failure was never pleasant. She was fine with it, sort of, if something was ‘practice’. She’d not be as impatient.

She never seemed to get that life is practice. Her children needed to learn resiliency more than perfectionism. I never lost my inner need to be creative. There were just periods of my life when it wasn’t allowed the opportunity to come out and play.

I’ve mused over the years on this by trying to imagine what my journey would have been like if her response to mistakes or failures had been, “Okay, you know what doesn’t work. What will you try next?” No judgement, just implicit encouragement to try again.

The musing is not a ‘poor me’ exercise. There’s value to envisioning yourself being empowered to keep going rather than being berated for not succeeding. Think about the warrior you could become with encouragement.

Why would this matter? That was then, and this is now.

Chances are, if you had a similar experience as a youngster, you might still carry a feeling of fear and dread at every failure. The ghost of the judgmental adult sitting on your shoulder pointing at it, disappointment dripping from their fingertips.

Sound familiar?

Now, turn your thoughts to the empowered you — you who look at an error or failure and think, “well, that didn’t work. Let’s try this.” Start nudging your image toward your shoulder, nudging the negativity out.

You’re building resilience. The resilience young you were not encouraged to build. It took me a lot of years to embrace my resiliency. In doing so, my creativity and confidence grew.

As a creative solopreneur, resiliency is the bedrock to starting, building and sustaining a business. Neither creativity nor business is easy. Learn to keep going, iterate and pivot as needed to find a success path. It’s crucial.

February 26, 2024
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​Greetings

February has almost concluded, we’ll leap into March on Friday. I had hoped to be further along on my infrastructure build. But, it takes the time it takes. I just keep plugging away at the details and it will get done.

Spent some time during the last three weeks developing a post that pulls the curtain back on how I use AI in my workflow. In particular, how I use it to create my Reflective Echoes. It’s one of my longer pieces I’ve written at 3200 words.

Yesterday I received a comment on an older Medium post I wrote on the art style ‘ambient occlusion’. The writer was asking me some questions about the prompts I used for the piece. I’d not shared them in the post. I started looking up the prompts to respond and then got curious about how the images would come out using the new version of Midjourney.

The updated post will be out this coming week.

Hope you have a great week.

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I call this newsletter Nicheless & Loving It because it captures who I am as a creative. For years I bought into the so called expert advice to “find my passion”, “decide on a niche”, “do one thing well” etc.

It was years of frustration for me.

Not because I couldn’t do one thing well. It was because I not only could do multiple things well, I also enjoyed doing a diverse range of “things”. I finally decided to go rebel and just embrace the fact that there are many things I want to write about and to try out. I decided to be nicheless and proud of it.

For me, learning didn’t end with school. I’ve always been an avid reader and curious to try new things. I’ve self-taught myself a lot over the years. According to author David Epstein in his book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”, there’s a term for that — broad learning.

A person who is a broad learner develops diverse skills and experiences. In doing so, they foster a more adaptable, creative and innovative mindset.

I’ve often found myself thinking outside the box when problem solving and a little mystified why others didn’t arrive at the same solutions. Oddly enough, I’d not made the connection that my wide range of interests was a gift.

Epstein challenges the conventional wisdom that people should decide on their focus early in life and then pursue it as their specialty. He suggests people who opt for a broader learning / work experience and then specialize later gain other advantages:

– Adaptability – their broad knowledge aids in adapting to new and changing situations.

– Creative Problem-Solving – ideas drawn from a diverse spectrum can lead to more innovative thinking outside the silo of a specialty

– Resilience With Change – the world is in a constant state of change. Generalists with a range of knowledge and skills are open to and can adapt more readily.

– Better Decision Making – the wider range of experiences and knowledge generalists draw from widens their perspective when problem solving.

– Learning Transfer – a person who has varied experiences and knowledge can transfer their knowledge into multiple areas. This ability can be especially valuable in solving problems that touch on multiple fields.

A person doesn’t need to have the genius level skills of da Vinci to be a broad learner. Curiousity and the willingness to learn across a broad spectrum of topics is where you start. Finding the crossover on those topics is where the gold is.

February 19, 2024
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Greetings

Another week begins. Today is a holiday in Canada. The first long weekend of the year is called Family Day. A time to remind us of the importance of family. We have two families. There is the family we’re born into and the family we choose.

Blood is always thicker than water, but many struggle with family dynamics. Individuals brought together by birth don’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes they struggle to get along. Sometimes they forget they are family and let their anger get out of hand.

I come from a family of five children. My siblings are a mix of personalities, likes, and dislikes. One of my brothers and I don’t agree on politics. We’ll argue over them but both of us are firm that when we get up from the table, we’re still family and that will always be more important than politics. I’m grateful that we can both be true to our beliefs and still respect each other. We don’t always have to agree to respect someone.

There are people in my life I value as though they were family. Those are my chosen family, people who care about each other and support what we do. We don’t need to get into the family dynamics with each other. There’s no messy stuff that intrudes into blood family. We get to care about each other because we’re drawn into a deep friendship of choice.

I value both my blood and chosen family.

I’ve made some progress on my sites this past week. Mostly backend work on SEO.

The post on workflow and how I use AI is about halfway done. Thursday is the deadline to have it completed. I’d like to have it completed sooner. Maybe even later today.

This month’s words for the Daily Echo have been an interesting challenge some days. I’ve learned a few new words like, equilibrioception, hypnagogia, liminal, hiraeth, phosphene, and komorebi. I didn’t realize I’d be expanding my vocabulary while doing this project, but I’m enjoying the discoveries I’ve been making.

Phosphenes caught my attention enough that I did my podcast this week on my experiences with it. It’s about a 7 minute listen.

Hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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February 12, 2024

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Greetings

Just a quick check in today. Projects always go so much faster in our heads than in reality. I’m still working on building site infrastructure. Progress has been slow but, it is indeed progress and I’m not about to give up.

I’ve been publishing my Daily Echoes but very little other writing. I was working on drafting some future posts last week when my mind got to thinking about how some of them I should add to the related sites. Then I had a debate with myself if I really wanted to spread out my posts even if they are on my sites.

The purpose of creating Shadows Central is to create a hub for my creative work. I need to work out how I want that to look. My internal debate finally decided the blog on Shadows Central will become where my posts will be, not scattered around the sites. It really can be surprising how quickly clutter can develop.

Those are details that slow me down. I think taking the time now to work through what I want and how to stay true to the vision, I’ll save time later. I won’t need to redo the sites if I do them with an eye to the future now.

Two groups I’ve been part of for some time are collaborating this month, Creative Work Hour and DreemPort. The objective is to work on and create an in-depth post on something we’ve not usually talked about. I’ve had people asking me about my workflow and how I use AI. To talk about that, I also need to talk about the Daily Echoes that I post every day. The deadline for the post is February 22nd. I’ve been carving out time to work on it.

One concern I’ve had with using AI as part of my workflow is that I could unconsciously allow AI’s writing style to drift into mine. I’ll use AI to gather thoughts and ideas together for me to consider, but any writing is my own, and that will not change. To check myself, I have subscribed to a site that will check writing to determine how much of it is human written. It also will check for plagiarism and facts.

I sometimes will use editing software when I’m writing to check my work. The AI scanners will pick up on the use of editing software as they have AI integrated into them. If you’re using editing software, you’re okay with basic grammar corrections. If you allow the software to rephrase parts of the work, it will trigger an AI detector. When editing software makes suggestions to me, I try to rephrase it my way. It not only holds to my writing style, but the exercise strengthens my writing.

Another week begins and I’m hopeful of more progress on my sites. We’ll see how I do next Monday.

I hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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Greetings

We’ve come almost to the end of the first month of 2024. While I’m making progress getting my websites setup, not nearly as much as I had hoped. Funny how jobs seem so much faster to do in our heads.

Writing has taken a back seat to me working on building websites other than creating and publishing the Daily Echoes every day. (I used to call them Word of the Day.) I did put out a fun post on Saturday that I’ll share below.

I published the trailer for season 2 of the Nicheless Narrative this past week. Doing so commits me to writing a least one post a week other than the Echoes. It will be delivered in audio format on my podcast.

It’s always an interesting push-pull proposition trying to find balance between what I want to accomplish and the hours in a given day. Yet, balance is what drives accomplishing anything. If I focus solely on one or two activities to the exclusion of everything else, I get those activities done but neglect the others.

Then add in time and energy or personal care, meals and tending to other chores. This isn’t me whining. I’m sharing that no matter how much someone appears to be organized and on track, there’s always a balancing act going on behind the scenes.

Some people make life balance look easy. Maybe for some it is, but I doubt it. If you have aspirations for more than staring at the TV, then managing time and energy is crucial. If you’re looking at those who make it look easy and thinking you’ll never be able to — STOP.

The difference between those who make it look easy and the person who thinks they can’t achieve the balance is — the easy look comes through effort and willing to adjust as needed. It doesn’t come by giving up.

Give thought to what you want to accomplish. Make lists, write out your ideas, and then list what you see as the challenges to accomplishing your desires are. Go through each one and make counter arguments. If you can’t found a counter argument or how to solve the blockage, seek out ideas from others or do searches to find out how others solve them.

If I’ve learned nothing else in the last few years, I have learned no problem is so unique that someone else hasn’t experienced it. The answers are out there, it’s a matter of how open you are to finding them.

What have I accomplished? The Nicheless & Loving it site is updated. I’ve added the archive of Prompt A Day emails for January and the back issues of this newsletter. I’ve setup Shadows Central on one of my original domains to serve as an information hub for all the sites I’m setting up. This will allow me to use one website link to promote all the sites.

What’s next? I’ll be starting to build Reflective Echoes which will be the home to the Daily Echoes. Once it’s built a new email list will be started called Daily Echoes. Subscribers will get the image and quote in their email daily. The reflections will also have their home there and I’ll be setting up the first of two shops on the site. As mentioned earlier, I have to write at least one post this coming week to produce my podcast.

I hope you have a great week.
ShadowsPub

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Greetings and welcome to 2024

Let me start with an apology and an explanation. Yesterday was one of those days when if something was going to go wrong, it would — and did. All of you received at least one email from the Prompt A Day list yesterday. Subscribers to the list received five in total.

Prompt A Day is a list I’ve been running for about three years now. Subscribers receive a set of prompts daily to help spark their creativity. What I had been calling Word of the Day uses the word prompt. I create the prompts a month at a time and usually schedule them a week at a time. For some reason, I hadn’t scheduled Saturday’s email when I did the last batch, usually done on Sundays.

Yesterday morning, I realized my error and decided to send the Saturday email out with an apology. I promptly sent it to ALL my subscribers on every list. For those who are not Prompt A Day subscribers, my apologies. I then decided to schedule them until the end of the month so I didn’t repeat the error, at least not in January.

During scheduling, I managed to send two of those days out immediately, but just to the list’s subscribers. I rescheduled those two, so they will go on the correct days. I caught a few times where I almost scheduled the email to go to all subscribers again. I hope I caught them all and you won’t receive errant emails again.

One of the things I did while on the holiday break was to move my lists from MailerLite to ConvertKit, which I feel is better suited for the plans I’m building. I could probably say I’m still getting used to their system, but paying closer attention to what I’m doing helps, too.

I had planned to have all my new infrastructure built by now, but plans get made, and fate decides. I’m still working on the sites and have shifted what I’m doing from my original timeline.

Here’s what the general plan is for 2024.

This newsletter, Nicheless and Loving It, will continue to be published weekly on Mondays. You may see some different content and format, but it will remain what it has been since its inception. I have revamped its site, nichelessandlovingit.com, with a new look. There is an archive of the Prompt A Day emails starting on January 1st. I’ll also be creating an archive of this newsletter there as well.

The Nicheless Narrative podcast is home on nichelessandlovingit.com, and the new season will start on Wednesday when I publish a short trailer for Nicheless Narrative 2024. I plan to expand where the podcast is available this season after I finish building my other infrastructure.

My weekly audio show, Pimp Your Post Thursday (PYPT), which I’ve hosted for over six years, will continue every Thursday. It’s a live show where the audience shares content they have created. I post the recording and recap the content shared during the show on Mondays. That will continue in 2024.

Now, here is what is going to be different in 2024.

What I published as Word of the Day last year will continue as the Daily Echo. I distribute them on my Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn, and dBuzz on the Hive blockchain. A website called Reflective Echoes is being built as a home for the Daily Echoes, where people can subscribe to receive them daily. The distributed version will be just the image and the quote. Subscribers will receive a brief explanation of the image and quote that I’ve not been publishing. An archive of the posts will be available as well.

The reflections I have been writing will also find their home on Reflective Echoes. I’ve published and distributed the Daily Echo every day since January 1st, but I’ve not written any reflections. I have some catching up to do there. Instead, I’ve focused on getting my infrastructure into place. I’m hoping to get the site completed this week.

The reflections will be available by subscription and published three times a week. I had initially planned for the Reflective Echoes subscription to start on January 1st, but that hasn’t happened. A more realistic start date will be March 1st. Once I get the list set up, anyone who joins before March 1st will receive March and April at no charge. Anyone joining in March will receive March at no charge.

Last but not least, there will be a store offering merchandise with the Daily Echoes images on the Reflective Echoes site. I will likely start with a line of mugs bearing the image and the quote for that day. Other lines will be added. Only images used for the Daily Echoes and the Word of the Day will be available on the site.

I’ve generated over 15,000 images since learning how to do generative art. There are a lot of them I really liked. Once the Reflective Echoes site is up and running, my attention will turn to another site awaiting my attention: Shadows Creatives. I will build a store with merchandise featuring many of my images on that site.

Over the last four years, I’ve published about 100 books on Amazon. They are colouring books, journals and notebooks. My site, Shadows Publishing, will receive a complete rebuild to better display and promote the books. I aim to add more to them, but maybe I should get the current round of construction done before committing to new books this year.

All these sites are the Shadows Publishing Group of sites where I am finally bringing together the various creative aspects of my work. You’ll see Shadows Publishing mentioned on each site. They are like departments of what I do.

One of the suggestions ConvertKit makes is for members to create what they call a Member Profile page on their site. It’s like a Link Tree that many people use to provide a central point for people to find them. I like both ideas but didn’t like using a third-party solution.

I have a domain I’ve not been using, and I installed a fresh WordPress version on it. Shadows Central will be my central point for people to discover what’s happening around the Shadows Publishing Group.

What about your writing? I’ve not been doing much more than publishing the Daily Echo. I’ll be returning to more regular content before the end of January. Construction dust is so messy.

I earned the Publish 365 Days badge on the Hive chain. I was one of 95 who completed the year. I’ve set my sights on adding a “2” to the badge at the end of 2024, and my goal is they will not all be Daily Echoes. I have done a couple of posts about Midjourney this month and will share them below.

I’m excited to have this plan in place. I’m a bit frustrated it’s not going as quickly as I’d have liked, but I’ll not be deterred. It will come together. Thank you for being along on the journey so far.

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