Dandelion-Utilitarian

LumaFusion is a video editing application, and in my experience, it’s pretty good. But what really blows me away is that it’s an example of a truly platform-agnostic app—at least within the Apple ecosystem.

I purchased it on my iPad (a 13 inch M2 iPad Air) for around £30. My main use case is editing short animation clips and using a proper video editor to manage transitions and link them together. While I’m very familiar with Kdenlive, I wanted something I could use on my iPad.

For my needs, LumaFusion is ideal. But what really impressed me wasn’t just the application itself—it was how seamlessly it adapts across different Apple devices.

It was originally designed as an iPad app, and it takes full advantage of the hardware. But it also works flawlessly on macOS, with full support for keyboard shortcuts, mouse interaction, and fullscreen mode.

I was also surprised to find that I could install it on my iPhone. While I doubt I’ll ever use it much on such a small screen, it’s nice to have the option.

This kind of cross-device compatibility feels unique to the Apple ecosystem. While I would never have switched to Apple just for these little perks, I have to admit—it’s really nice to have apps that don’t feel compromised on any platform. I doubt we’ll ever see a Windows application that installs on a phone as seamlessly as this.

It all feels like magic.

Humans make things. Whether this creative urge is unique to us or a common trait among all species that reach our level of social and technological development remains a mystery. It is also worth noting that the creative urge does not exist in all members of our species. Many people are perfectly content watching Netflix and eating cereal out of a box. Strangely, there has never been societal pressure to be creative. There is pressure to get a job and pay bills, get an education, and shower from time to time. But failing to find motivation to create does not cause any social issues at all.

Most of my friends create things. I know artists, coders, tinkerers, and writers. Most people in my life are working on a “project” or some other general creative task. I enjoy getting updates on their creations, even when I don’t entirely follow what they’re working on. There is something absolutely wonderful about listening to someone talk about what they are making. There’s an intimate passion that oozes from them when they speak of their “work.”

I have never thought of myself as creative—which is strange, considering my major pastime is writing fiction. I have published books, novellas, blogs, and even videos, and I have been doing so for years. I love storytelling. Writing has been the best way for me to do it.

And yet, oddly, I still do not consider myself creative.

This isn’t a self-esteem issue. I am proud of my writing. I’m happy to discuss my work with people. Genuinely, I think I’m a good storyteller. My prose may need tightening, sure, but the only way to improve is to keep writing—and I do.

I recently spoke in a post about learning to draw and how I was using the Niceferatu comic I post here as a platform for this endeavor. I have to admit, the postings of the comic have slowed recently. This isn’t because I have lost interest in the story or project. It’s because I realised that my art skills were not good enough to do justice to the story I wanted to tell.

While Niceferatu was supposed to be a platform for learning, it quickly became a platform for storytelling—one that my artwork was not yet good enough for. I even considered writing Niceferatu as a script or novella. Ultimately, though, the point of the character is to help me learn art.

So, to the gym I have gone.

There were a few things I had to remind myself of before I started, including, considering why I wanted to learn to draw.

I love writing. It is my main creative pastime. The only major downside to writing is that it takes a great deal of time to produce a finished work. I’m not naïve about this—I know full well that many people work on drawings for months. But I want to create basic art for a comic. I’m not trying to make high art or draft my visual opus.

I have watched hours of videos on composition, basic line art, and color theory. While I’m pretty sure some things I have drawn are “okay,” I have yet to create something that makes me happy. Progress is minor, slow, and very linear. But progress has been made. Sometimes, when I learn a new way of thinking about composition, it takes me a few attempts to work it into my flow—and often, I feel like I’ve taken a step backward.

I have come to think of this as a workout—a drawing workout. In fact, when I began to think of my art journey as a gym or a training regimen, I started aligning my expectations to a much longer timeline. In turn, my patience with myself has increased.

As I said earlier, despite writing a lot and telling many stories in the process, I don’t think of myself as creative. I think this is largely because my expectations of what it means to be creative are not reasonable.

I understand the process of writing well enough to recognize it as hard work—day after day, a consistent drive toward a goal. I don’t automatically consider this creative because I am distracted by the process and rarely reflect on the product.

With drawing, I have a different problem. I have always associated “being creative” or “artistic” with natural talent, but I am now at the point where I recognise talent as the end result of hard work. Maybe, one day, I will consider myself creative. But not until I finish my time at the gym of practice.

I wonder how many other people feel this way.

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I have recently been on something of a cleanse. Ejecting things from my life which I feel are no longer relevant. Trying my best to live intentionally and considering what adds value to my life, and what are things which I use as crouches for someone I used to be. Towards the end of this year, I am hoping to be in a financial position where I can buy a camper van and have little weekend excursions with my dog. I one day hope to retire into a mobile home of some kind and visit Europe, assuming there is a way to have my dog come with me, that is.

This pipe-dream about a small space, mobile future has been leaking into the decisions I make day to day. While I am a fair way away from having to think about the practical things, I have something of a clear thought pattern. I have likely mentioned it here before:

If something won’t work as part of my van life, it’s going to have to go eventually, so why bring it into life, or keep it in my life now?

This gets condensed into far fewer words, the following is the more common: “Good for van?”

This idea about spending the next year(s) preparing for the future I want has been really good for me. It has created some complications, some clarity and some questions. I have enjoyed purging things from my physical space, reducing my power consumption on a day to day basis, and it has even resulted in me having something of a capsule wardrobe selection.

A side effect of this has been that I have been preoccupied with the internet, as a source of interaction. When I get to go on those road trips I am pretty sure I can power my laptop and iPad without any issues, but, whats the point in having a powered up laptop is there is nothing to use it for? 

A down side of spending time in a an is the excellent change of being without internet access. This isn’t something which worries me, but it is something I think about.

My writing won’t be effected as Scrivener is an entirely offline application. I have local backups of a lot of video media and my kindle contains my entire digital book library (I download everything I buy.) My Miyoo Mini has many retro games I can play, and I have my theology books in print. And, for those very odd occasions that access to an LLM would be useful, I have offline options for that too.

I recently purchased a Digital Audio Player (DAP (an MP3 player)) and filled it with songs which can’t be taken away from me by a timed out connection. I have to write an entire post about that, at some point, as I think, it is quite an interesting topic. (It’s a Surfans F28.)

All in all without constant internet access, I’ll be fine. I have enough squirrelled away for basically any road trip I could find myself on. 

This got me to thinking though. I am confident that I don’t ‘need’ the internet for anything major, but I have never considered turning off my WiFi. 

The reason for this, is in part, because my preparation for some time offline is rooted in some real goals. I don’t want to have to consider internet when I am out adventuring in a van, but I do want to read things, watch things and play things. I am not prepping for an imagined scenario or end of the world event. 

However… When I think about my offline time, it does not fill me with dread. It used to. A few years ago the idea of being offline would make me twitch. During lockdown, the internet was a lifeline, but now, I am not sure I wouldn’t miss it the way I once would have done.

I still want to talk to my friends, I would still need to get my Kindle online every so often to get new books. Sooner or later the backed up media I have would go stale. But, an intermittent connection would likely not worry me too much. I could stay in touch with my friends via Email (I already communicate regularly with one friend via email.)

But still, I never turn off my WiFi.

With this in mind, I have considered that perhaps I will spend one day a week without internet. on Thursdays I make a point of not socialising online, I jokingly refer to it as ‘my day off.’ 

I have a plan, that on Thursdays, going forward, I will turn off my internet connection. Save for two short burst. I will check my bank and email when I wake up, and around nine in the evening I will check email again. This time, in total will be less than fifteen minutes and it should stop me from having any anxiety that life has exploded and no one told me. 

This will also mirror the intermittent connection which I am planning for one day ‘copping with.’ I don’t know if this will be a long term experiment or if I will extend it to more days as time goes on, but I sincerely like the idea of having ‘time off’ from the constant stream of data coming.

The very fact that I even feel this digital fatigue is a little telling to me. I don’t regularly look at any social media and I only check news feeds in the early afternoon. I am always connected but I don’t feel that I am ‘terminally online’ in any way. 

Maybe the simplifying I have been doing has wormed it’s way into my subconscious and this seems like the next thing to do. 

I’ll up date you in a few weeks. I have a feeling that this is going to be interesting. 

I have spent some time reading the Cal newport book ‘Digital Minimalism.’ I’m not that far in, but I picked it up because I was feeling a ‘thing,’ the book, so far, has made me double feel that ‘thing.’ I need to write a full post about the ‘thing.’

The ‘thing,’ if anyone is wondering, is the realisation that I am unhappy with the amount of time I spend attached to the internet, and to my screens. I don’t even think I spend that much time on here compared to most people. I read a while back that the average screen time per day is about 6 hours. Which seems mad to me. My average is about 2 hours, and that feels excessive!

My laptop probably gets more, but that’s when I’m writing. I enjoy writing and don’t really think of it as screen time, despite it literally being that. I think of it as keyboard time.

the paradoxical thing is that I have been reading the digital minimalism book on a Kindle, which is a screen. - I suppose wen I tlak about ‘screen,’ I actually mean ‘internet’