In 2015 we moved my then 86-year-old grandmother from the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield, a place she'd called home for nearly 60 years, to an old folks home in the city.

My grandfather passed in 2006, and my grandmother had carried on without him in that house, the memory of him persisting in the furniture and the picture frames, the armchair where he used to sit, the old computer in the basement from which he would send his grandkids emails.

My mother, one of the few children still living in Montreal, enlisted me to help. My grandmother didn't have a whole lot to move, and we packed up her home over the course of a weekend. She couldn't keep much, moving into a smaller space and without the need for many of her things.

What struck me – while opening drawers and closets, pulling out little containers from under the bed, throwing away expired food and forgotten canned goods, and packing the contents of my grandmother's life into cardboard boxes – was the memory embedded in this home. The papers, receipts, and letters stuffed into drawers. The pictures of people I didn't recognize, in albums that hadn't been opened in decades. The dust collected on vases, the scribbled notes on a pad by the old landline, and tiny trinkets of some significance scattered about her house. I was unearthing a private life, and a history. A version of my grandmother I hadn't met.

I thought about what someone might uncover packing up my things at the end of my own life. What they might think of me and my private possessions. My journals and sketchbooks filled with errant notes and ideas, my photo albums capturing moments interesting only to me, the books I've collected over the years, the various little buttons and rocks and objects I've assigned temporal sentimental value. What kind of story would this all tell? What kind of impression would it leave behind?

In the 11 years I've been in New York City I've lived in 10 apartments, and each time I pack up my things is an opportunity to take stock of the jumble that represents my material footprint. Beyond the boxes, though, I'm often quite moved when going from one home to another, the act of leaving the space behind stirring something inside my heart. In each place I like to think I've left some kind of mark – not something physical, but like the space itself will remember me.

Space holds more sentimental energy and memory for me than objects do. Whenever I return somewhere I haven't been in years, a strange sense of knowing washes over me, like I'm living in a half forgotten dream. A temporal connection links me to the person I used to be when I last stood in that spot, or sat in that chair, or looked through that window, or noticed how the light plays on the wall for a brief moment every sunny afternoon.

While objects get moved, or tossed, or destroyed, or transformed, the space remains. Eventually, it too will become dust, but the memory lives on all the same.

~until next time, R

Some things I’m thinking about:

📄 Life Without Escaping by Sam Peitz

🎧 Podcast: Henrik Karlsson – Cultivating a Life that Fits (Dialectic)

📄 Game Designers vs Education Researchers on Unguided Instruction

🎵 Pines by Men I Trust

I started this newsletter at the tail end of 2022 and then promptly went radio silent for over a year. I'm back now, hopefully with some consistency. But no promises ;)

Part of the problem was I didn't really know what I wanted this project to be. Was it an opportunity to write in public? A way to connect with people? To showcase my work? I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure.

What I do know is that I still want to build this platform as a means of freeing myself from social media and to explore a different kind of creative expression and connection.

When I started this thing I was at a bit of a crossroads in my creative focus. I had largely pivoted away from filmmaking and sunk my teeth into game development. The last year and change has been a process of shifting back to movies, but this time, the CG animated kind.

Gazing backward

My earliest little movies and cinematic experiments were actually animated. As a kid I was obsessed with stop-motion and made videos with plasticine in my bedroom that I published on YouTube. I tried my hand at frame-by-frame hand drawn animation in Microsoft Paint and Movie Maker. I crafted worlds in drawings and sequential art.

Above: my first claymation video

Somewhere along the line, I gave up animation in favor of live-action filmmaking. I put down the plasticine and never picked it up again.

Over the years, I flirted with animation but held it at arm's length. Candidly, I was afraid of the medium's public perception as being unserious, and only for children. I didn't personally believe in those stereotypes, but I worried the rest of the world wouldn't take me seriously as an artist, which was (unfortunately) quite important to me for some time. I felt similarly about games. Looking back, this perspective was a reflection of my own insecurities, and my fear influenced my creativity more than I’d like to admit. It was misguided, and as I've gotten older I've worked to let go and lean into whatever forms of expression resonate most deeply within myself.

Returning to animation and working with Blender (my current tool of choice), has been one of the most liberating and creatively expansive experiences of my life. In CG I can attempt to create anything I can imagine. It's opened doors to new realms of storytelling possibility. It’s shrinking the layers that exist between me and a finished product. It’s raw and direct. Above all, it has been a profound reminder of the importance of authenticity in creative expression.

Above: two recent pieces of mine; CG animation

I'm going to continue to grow and evolve as an artist, with many more pivots to come. I'm still passionate about live-action, as well as games and software, and I have an interactive project planned for some time in the future. For now, I couldn't be more excited about the animation projects in my pipeline, and I'm going to work with the garage doors up, including you in the process.

Did any of this resonate with you? I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email.

Thanks for reading!

Reid

Some things I’m thinking about:

📄 It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now; by Andrew Norman Wilson

🎧 Podcast: Is A.I. already taking jobs? with Paul Trillo re: Sora

⚒️ Poline: Esoteric Color Palette Generation Library

🎵 Love’s Boy by Sol Seppy

I don't have time to achieve everything I want to do. I often lament that there aren't enough hours in the day, or wish I could subsist on 3 hours of sleep.

I also recognize broadly that our time on Earth is unpredictable. Life is fragile and not guaranteed. Tomorrow, I could be hit by a bus or diagnosed with a terminal illness. Perhaps the whole universe will collapse unto itself.

The idea that we have any control over our time is an illusion. The reality is though, even with the dubious assumption of a long and fruitful life, there still isn't enough time to do it all.

This is a painful awakening.

I'm reminded of Sylvia Plath's fig tree in The Bell Jar, this passage burned in my memory:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, [...] and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I resonate deeply with Plath. As a multidisciplinary person, I often ponder the divisions of my time and how those divisions contribute to the overall picture of my life.

Our attention is everything. Whatever commands our attention is what our lives become, and anything that distracts us quite literally takes pieces of our lives away.

Distraction is avoidance of discomfort

Why do we get distracted? I've concluded that I usually succumb to distraction because I'm avoiding discomfort.

A few of these discomforts:

• "I won't get this done in time."

• "It won't be good."

• "I don't know what I'm doing."

• “Am I going down the right path?”

These anxieties are all intrinsically connected to the finite nature of our time. I'm terrified I won't be able to finish whatever I'm working on, or that the outcome will be rubbish. I worry that I'm not good enough, or perhaps that I’m moving in the wrong direction entirely. This pain, this anxiety, can be totally paralyzing. Inertia, of course, only makes the problem worse.

Many people have written about this central struggle in creating.

Steven Pressfield calls it "resistance" in his book The War of Art. Cal Newport says that writer's block is just a major part of what it feels like to be a writer. Creation is struggle.

I try to remind myself that endeavors are often only compelling because they are difficult. Challenge is crucial. If it isn't pushing us to grow, it might be worth examining whether or not it's worth our time.

Okay, so how do we prioritize?

I periodically fall into a trap obsession with efficiency. The bait is this sense that if I can perfectly optimize my systems I'll be able to get everything done. This idealistic approach falls quite short.

We've been taught that we must seize the day; maximize our experience. This is a fear based mindset. It can be uncomfortable to acknowledge we cannot do everything, but don’t fret! Our finite time is what gives our decisions meaning! If we did have unlimited time, nothing would matter.

I'm learning now to surrender to this thought. Rather than it depressing me, I find it empowering. We must develop the skill of saying “no.” The bitter truth, though: we must say “no” to things we really want to do. There are many, many more endeavors of deep value than time to undertake them all. Our choices matter.

Part of my early development process on any project is to self-reflect on a few evaluations. Without a good answer to these questions, the endeavor can be deemed a "distraction" and placed aside.

• Why do I really want to spend my time on this?

• Does this serve my big picture goals?

• Will this enable me to create more things?

This is an insufficient list. Send me an email! I'm thinking out loud here, and I'd love to hear your perspective.

In lieu of all this... I've been working on a new project. I'll tell you about it next time.

Thanks for reading!

Reid

Some things I’m thinking about:

📄 Why books don't work

📄 Balancing full-time work with creative projects

📄 Rise of the Ambient Web

🎵 C3L3STIAL_CITY by bliss3three

I'm Reid Hannaford. I'm a Canadian filmmaker and game designer living, working, and playing in Brooklyn, NY.

I make things about the harmony between humans, machines, and nature. Lately I’ve been mesmerized with creating immersive behavior in games and building worlds you can get lost in.

You’re currently reading the first post from my newsletter about creativity and curiosity.

Noise → Signal

I am on a lifelong quest to balance my personal ratio of noise and signal.

Collectively, we’re at a precipice. The introduction of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 and ChatGPT are about to cause an explosion of noise in an already overflowing internet of information.

Some predictions:

• culture will shift to value whatever automation is bad at generating

• authenticity, imperfection, and realness will become even more important than it already is

• your work itself will become less valuable than your personal connection to your audience

This shift has monumental implications for creators and artists. It was already difficult to stand out in the sea of democratized online publishing. Now imagine what that looks like when generated content indistinguishable from handmade content is flooding the market at an unprecedented speed.

Anti-algorithm

The algorithmic curation on the social media platforms we rely on for distribution actively makes this problem worse! Algorithms aren’t human-centric by design.

Instagram doesn't care if you're forming meaningful connections with other humans. Its primary focus is to keep you on platform for as long as possible.

TikTok, similarly, has made it clear that it doesn't really matter who you choose to follow. They're going to show you what they think you'll find most captivating. TikTok is an entertainment platform, not a social platform.

Engagement with these platforms is self-defeating. Worse, it fails to leverage what makes the internet such a powerful vehicle for connection. So, I've decided to forsake the algorithm-driven creator model.

Enter: an alternative

I am, at heart, a consumer of long-form information. I enjoy blog posts, books, articles, personal websites, analysis, and the cross-pollination of ideas.

I'm also not interested in hustling for the algorithm, constantly revising my "content strategy" to serve whatever app is most popular. I want to connect with real people. Feel seen, feel heard, and see and hear others. I'd rather connect with fewer people that actually care about who I am and what I'm making. Quality over quantity.

The answer, I think, is a veteran approach: email newsletters. The old, tried and true.

This newsletter, which I'm calling Enter, will be playful, personal, and experimental. I’ll attempt to write weekly. You can expect explorations about the intersection of art and tech, and the future of creativity. You can also expect posts about my own personal work and process. A development log for my games, movies, and other things I make. If you’re a creator, or you’re at all interested in following my creative process, you’ll enjoy these writings.

I'm actively attempting to let go of polish in favor of creating in public. I'm still finding my voice, and I don't know how it will evolve, but I’m diving in anyway. This makes me pretty uncomfortable. That's kind of the point.

Thanks for reading until the end! I hope you'll join me on this creative journey as we continue to figure out how to make sense of this changing world, and how to make meaningful creations.

Speak soon,

Reid

Some things I'm thinking about:

📄 The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI

📄 LLMs and information post-scarcity

📄 Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas

🎵 Fanfare for naran ratan