I'm going to be blunt: I'm not even sure why I'm sitting down to write this. I don't know where this post is even going, and if I'm honest with myself, I'm a little scared by where it might go or what I might say.^[1] But I think I just need to get these thoughts out of my head and out into the ether.

The last few months, in the midst of the pandemic, have been mostly ok for me and my family. I'm privileged as hell: I have a job where I can work at home, care for my kids and my partner, and we're all doing well health wise. I've even gone out to a few places, albeit limited, and it's been OK.

There's this looming feeling over everything though: we're in a pandemic. I'm not sure we as a society really grasp what this means. There's so much information – and misinformation – out there, and not everything is known or explained well. People are taking ridiculous stances on their feelings when we should be focused on science and reason. I've said it on more than one occasion that if we can't pull this together, we have failed as a species and deserve every bit of what we get. And to be clear: you should wear a mask and wash your hands. Please don't bother to convince me otherwise. Go ahead and lose my number if you feel differently.

In the past few weeks, I've been agonizing over the decision for sending my child back to face-to-face learning. I've communicated with our district superintendent for the first time^[2] and voiced my concerns with the plans laid out before the parents. I've lost so much sleep over this I don't really even want to think about it. It's constantly weighed on my mind, and I feel physically tired from it.

In speaking with my best friend today, we lamented how our discussions keep devolving into discussion of the current pandemic, how others are handling it, and how we are handling it. How we feel like bad parents and crazy people for continuing courses of action for months on end. My fight-or-flight response has been in almost constant engagement since this all went down. And I feel exhausted. But what the hell else are we going to discuss? Apps? Technology? More unimportant shit? Of course not. Because we have a fucking lion in the form of a pandemic chasing us.

I've been wanting to be creative for a while. I really admire the people who can be creative in this time. I had some push at the start of this, put out a few posts, and then… nothing. I hit a wall. I had been thinking of various posts over the past few months, but thought to myself none of this shit is important. And then I find myself doing other things. It should be no surprise that the single most traveled place in the past few months has been to the hardware store, masked and gloved, to get things to improve the house. I've learned some new things on how to hang a door properly, and how big a pain in the ass it can be. I'm working with my girlfriend to understand what we want to do the house how we want to make it our place. I've created an office space, and I'm starting on a new, more permanent one.

So when I think about it, I'm being creative, but in a more practical sense. I'm getting my house in order – my literal house – for the first time in a long time. I've made list upon list of what I want to do, and sadly, how much it's going to cost me over time. But I know that in a few short years, I might be in a great spot with a house I'm finally proud of after 10 years of ownership.

I am, however, stifled when it comes to writing. My brain feels like it hurts when I sit down to type things out. My journaling has been hit or miss in the past few weeks, as has my general health routine. I'm feeling burned out. I'm feeling like I need a break. And so, I think I'll continue to take one. This isn't to say that I don't have thoughts and ideas: I've created several mind maps to help me organize what I want to write about in the future, and ideas that I feel are worth sharing. But right now, given the current climate, I just can't bring myself to sit down and really focus on them when so much else out there is important.

There's a level of guilt that I feel when it comes to this. There are times where I think "I owe it to people to write and put things out there". But I keep coming back to the fact that it doesn't put food on the table. That it isn't my day job and takes away from time with my family or my home. Maybe if there was incentive on my end to write, I'd do it more often and carve out the time. But until I focus on how to incentivize all this, I'm going to continue to write at my pace and figure out how to make it all happen.

I'll get back to doing it eventually. And I'm hopeful that some of the ideas that I have in my mind are actually decent enough to share. Of course, I'll be writing about things coming for the fall; maybe saving some of my creative energy for that is the best course for me. We're all navigating this global pandemic differently. We're all trying to do what we need to keep sane and healthy. And for me, that takes the shape of protecting my family and house by working and providing leadership, all to keep the lion away. The writing will have to wait for now. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get a bunch more work done around the house. Enough procrastination. Time to do the work.

I'm often asked what different uses I have for Drafts, my everything-text app of choice. I have a variety of core use cases which I use Drafts for every day: even with my posts and large reviews, journaling is by far the highest volume of content I create.

I've journaled for a while. And while I'm not perfect at doing it and frequently miss days because life sometimes gets in the way, there are some considerations I've made for my particular journaling solution. A few years ago, I created my own journal solution: this utilized Drafts + Dropbox + Workflow. That solution morphed into using DEVONthink To Go to save the journal entries, primarily because of security. I was also storing more information there at the time, so it made sense.

Then, in the midst of a pandemic, I started looking at a lot of the things in my life that were just adding to my least favorite thing: clutter. I started wondering where DEVONthink fit into my life. And aside from keeping the rare thing or two in it, I only used it for journaling. So while this solution worked – and worked well – it started to become apparent to me that I no longer wanted this as the solution.

Inevitably, as often these ear worms do, it sent me down a new path. How could I take my journaling solution and simplify it to use the apps and services I want to use so that I can streamline my process, or at the very least, make it easier to use and review later? Just use a dedicated app.

I've been down this road. In the past, I used a dedicated journaling app. And while it was good at what it did, there were aspects that didn't appeal to me: security breaches and a subscription price isn't worth it for me.^[1] I can roll my own solution here utilizing apps I already have, and save myself the cost. And, for the most part, I'm not missing a lot from some of the full-featured apps.

Another reason for not doing this is that most use their own syncing solution, which has me uncomfortable. I like to control where my data is going. I trust Apple more than most, even if it's not a fully secure thing.^[2] Having that control feels right to me, and having my data stored in iCloud Drive will be better for me in the long run anyway.

Moving from Dropbox to iCloud Drive has allowed me to purge my subscription to Dropbox entirely, and I increased my 200GB iCloud Drive plan to 1TB. Now I pay far less for the same storage I was using. I still have my Dropbox account and still use the 7GB free that I have, but I don't use it in the same way; it is for shared or temporary files. I don't need to have DEVONthink installed, thus clearing up some clutter from my life.

So, now on to how I threw this together…

I start my journal by tapping a shortcut in the widget or tapping the shortcut notification, which in turn kicks of an automation; the automation actually calls the shortcut, so the process of them is the same, but how I get there can be different.^[3] This shortcut asks me a few questions, all of which can be run in the widget and is my preferred method, to start off my journal. From there, it adds my sleep duration and resting heart rate, along with aspects of the weather forecast for the day, all formatted how I like them.

All of that text goes into Drafts, along with the proper tags to make sure it gets into my Journal workspace. This is where all of my thoughts go. I have it broken into a couple of categories: quick hits and entries.^[4] Quick hits are just that: quick little thoughts. I found that adding quick hits has allowed me to just write instead of feeling like I need to say anything profound. Just gets it out of my head and on to the pa… screen. Entries are for more long-form writing. I don't do them every day, but when I do, I like to make sure I know what time of the day I was writing it. Over time, I've even seen patterns just knowing the time of day I was writing, which has been interesting.

For entries or even quick hits, I have several shortcuts which can add data to my journal: weather, location, health, and music. Each of those adds pertinent data to my entries at any given time; they start in Drafts, kick over to Shortcuts, gets the data back, and sends a block of text back into my journal entry. For the health shortcut, it needs to be run from the phone. It is also limited to move ring numbers, as exercise minutes and stand hours aren't available via Shortcuts right now. My hope was to recreate activity rings, but I'll wait on that until more support come to both the Shortcuts and Health apps.

Along with the data, I can add a few other file types that might be relevant for me: audio recordings, photos, and files. These don't save the files into Drafts, which does not support them, but rather provides Markdown-formatted links to the files for use later. I occasionally will do an audio file to capture something that's more nuanced than text. Similarly, I might need to reference a file later and having the option here helps as well. It may seem weird that I have files linked to a journal, but, well… it's my journal.

Now that I have everything in place, rather than save the text, I realized I just want to be able to view the final product after it's completed for the day. For a while, I was saving plain text and viewing it later via a quick look action, but I ultimately just want the rendered journal entry. This sent me down the path to creating a way to save a PDF of the document, along with rendered images and links to the audio recordings and files for later consumption.

This might sound complex, but what it forced me to do was focus on what I really wanted to ever put in a journal, and develop those solutions. Now that they are there, assuming Drafts, Shortcuts, and Scriptable don't go away, I'll be able to have this solution for a long time. In fact, if improvements come to Shortcuts which provide certain features, I might not even need all three to make this happen.^[5]

The trickiest part of all of this was saving the photos, files, recordings, and the final PDF where I wanted them to go. This is where Scriptable comes in. Scriptable provides the ability to create File Bookmarks, something highlighted by Federico in his FS Bookmarks post. In simple terms, the File Bookmark enables me to have saved locations to send data into. Scriptable is able to manipulate files in a way that Shortcuts simply can't: if I want to move a file from one location in iCloud Drive to another, I can't do that natively in Shortcuts. But with a little JavaScript and some help,^[6] I'm able to do just that.

For each one of the different document types – photos, recordings, files, and entries – I have a file bookmark to a folder. They all run generally in the same way, with some exceptions in each. The main point of all of these was I could save them into the /iCloud Drive/Shortcuts/ folder in an automated way, but would have to manually select where to put it if I wanted the file anywhere else. This is less than ideal from an automation perspective. It can be done, but if there's a way to automate it, I'd much rather.

So for each of the shortcuts outlined below, I have a script in Scriptable which is basically the following:

let filePath = args.fileURLs[0];
let fm = FileManager.iCloud()
let destinationPath = fm.bookmarkedPath('Path'); //change this to your bookmarked folder in Scriptable
let fileName = fm.fileName(filePath) + '.' + fm.fileExtension(filePath);
fm.move(filePath, destinationPath + '/' + fileName)

As you see in the comment within the script, you need to change the 'Path' to whatever your file bookmark is called. For my journal entries, I simply have it named 'Journal'. For each one of the file types I have a journal bookmark for where they need to end up. I also have a separate scriptable action which is incorporated into the shortcuts I use. With all of these in place, I can start to send the different files where I need them to go automatically.

Each shortcut is essentially the same: it asks me to select a file, rename the file, and then saves it into a Shortcuts folder. Then, I'm kicked over to Scriptable to move the file from one place to another. Upon return, they each produce a link to the file type. While moving out of Shortcuts into Scriptable and back again isn't ideal, it does work; my hope is that in the future, I won't have to do this song-and-dance maneuver.

For audio recordings and files, I've taken the prefix of the launcher shortcut and just appended the file name and folder location manually:

shareddocuments:///private/var/mobile/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Personal/Journal/

This works extremely well and means I don't have to create a file bookmark for every file. Photos, however, uses something else. At the time of me writing this, I cannot figure out a way to have renderable links for photos within Files. I've tried everything I can think of, but nothing has worked. I could use my website and upload images, but I only need them on a temporary basis. This is where Dropbox comes in. I save the image file to Dropbox in a temp folder, get the link to the file, and insert a Markdown image link ![name](url); I had to make sure to replace the www with dl to make it render, but it works very well. Every so often, I have a shortcut that I can tap and remove all of the temporary images from the folder. I don't actually need to keep the images here: because they are rendered and a part of the PDF, they are ephemeral files for me. If I ever want to review the image, I can just pop into my photo library, search on the date, and then get the file.

To save my entires, I have a shortcut that is kicked off from Drafts. It accepts the Markdown-formatted text from Drafts, converts it to HTML, and then uses a customized HTML formatting I created to generate a PDF. Once I view the PDF and hit 'OK' to proceed, the PDF is then saved to iCloud Drive in the Shortcuts folder; from there, I'm sent over to Scriptable where the script moves it from the folder to the Journal bookmarked folder, similar to how I do with the other files.

So, I'm sure you're wanting to see these actions. But, I'm not sharing them right now. Not because I'm trying to be mean and withhold them, but they change very frequently; I'm tweaking them so often that during the time I started writing to the time I'm going to hit publish on this post, it will have changed no less than 4 times.^[7] These actions are pretty simple to create, aside from the JavaScript I already shared. The image below will help guide you through some of the Shortcuts. I'm thinking about sharing them at some point,^[8] but for now you'll just have to steal inspiration and create them yourself.

Compared to what I originally started with and even my "upgraded" solution along the way, this new solution is so much better for me and the way I want to keep my journal. I'm even going back through my journal entries, fixing some image and file links, and will be saving those out as a PDF as well.

In the future, I hope that I can do a couple of things to improve all of it: move the files within Shortcuts actions itself, and render images using iCloud Drive rather than using Dropbox. If I can streamline this workflow to be Drafts + Shortcuts – two apps that will be around for a long time – I'd much prefer it. And while I don't mind supporting another indie developer right now, I would love to reduce the digital clutter in my life even more.

The end result of this has paid off for me: I've built a complete journaling system over time, built on the foundation of common formats and apps I use on a daily basis, to create the best system for me. As with a lot of things surrounding Drafts and the way I work, I can see this workflow sticking for a long time. It's evolved from a text based solution to a PDF solution. The PDF format has been around for ages, and I don't see that going away for a while. It will allow me to keep a lot of the historical record intact for at least my lifetime. Will I ever share it with anyone? Probably not. But I can rest easy that if I really wanted to do it, I now have the ability to do so.

Some of you have asked about my new site design, and the reasons behind some of my choices. Rather than explain them individually, I thought I'd drop them all here.

The original site design dates back to 2016. I did most of it myself, with the exception of some help from my sage web advisor – Jeff Mueller. I was happy with it for a long time – nearly four years. There were things that I wanted to add in an effort to make it more modern that I had zero idea how to implement. The development time for me to sit down and figure it out piled up to not be worth it.

And it finally hit me: why not have someone else do this work? There are many times where giving this work to someone else can free you to do what you hadn't before. I do this in other aspects of my personal life, so why not this? So that's when I set down this path, and really embraced this new direction. This time, rather than ask for advice, I contracted out the work to Jeff.

I found a WordPress theme that I liked, but I knew I wanted to make it much more my own. I wanted to implement some things that I had seen elsewhere: a light/dark theme which automatically switches based on your device preferences, code blocks with line numbers, and better support for images with captions. Things that make it feel more in-tune with the improvements in technology and not stuck in the past. It was a relief to not have to dive into the code and tweak it, but rather to give direction as to what to fix and let someone do the work.

The only thing left for me to decide were the theme colors. I had been using a yellow and gray for my last theme. And while I still enjoy that color combination a lot, it doesn't work at all for a light theme, which pushed me to choose something different. So naturally, I started out with a completely different color than most – blue.

Blue is fine. Blue is ok. But blue is used by so many others. Just take a look at your home screen on your phone, tablet, or computer and you'll see a sea of blue in a lot of cases. So, I decided to not to go down the road of so many others. I looked a few other options – some greens and teals – but nothing really jumped out at me. Then, while changing my watch band one evening, it hit me:

Dragon Fruit.

I have had a dragon fruit sport loop band since Christmas. It is my favorite Apple Watch band that I own because it was a gift from my partner (she's amazing) and it's just a solid color choice.^[1] I cannot tell you how often I wear this because it pairs so well with the grayscale pallet, from white to gray to charcoal to black. So I put that color against a light and dark background that came from some Drafts theme colors, and was instantly in love. Pair that with a nice mid-gray which works for both, and I had my palette.

This is where the logo journey started. I wanted something different, something new. The same day that I thought about a site redesign and a new logo, I saw a post from another Jeff – Jeff Perry. He was offering to do some work to help others, and boy did I need it. There were a lot of back and forth discussions and directions with him about the logo. Too many. And all of that my fault, as I didn't exactly know where I wanted to go with all of it.

There were multiple iterations of a design. I enjoyed the first logo a lot. I liked the whole idea of having a vague looking N surrounding an homage to Drafts. The idea was clean, but ultimately decided not to go this path because I thought it looked a bit too much like a business card and not something I would want for a website.

Then I went to another extreme: what if I created a design of glyphs to show what my site is about (most of the time). I liked this idea a lot too. But it looked more like an infographic than a logo. It would be a chunky item to put at the top of the page. I do still like this a lot, and might incorporate some of the design aesthetic into posts in the future, but I ultimately didn't pursue this direction further.

Then I went back to basics, and hated myself a bit. This… is awful. I'm ashamed of it. So why not discuss it and show it off? It really comes down to this: in searching some logo designs, I saw a lot of line/dot art that looked like an object. And while this worked in practice for other designs, it is a horrible design for what I wanted. And I won't mention it again. Ever.

I went further back. When a job goes wrong, you go back to the beginning. All the way back to my first logo. It was simply the n in the font choice of my website. I really only ever used it for my favicon, and no where else. I always had nahumck.me up on top. So I went into Pixelmator, and put that on the canvas in text. I started thinking about what I could do to break it up. This lead me to a line, which lead me to a rectangle. and that's when it all started coming together. I'll break up the nahumck and the me with a box, where the period would be a do which breaks up the box.

Now, that's not much of a logo. But if I took it down to where I started originally – with a simple n – it might work best. So I handed this off to Jeff, and he created the final version. The corners became more rounded and the line stopped closer to the dot and also followed the outline of it. I loved this little touch in the design. This is what I will use going forward for the website, and I absolutely love it!

It was a process to get this done. Working with the Jeffs was easy, even if I was stressed in my head. Going through some tough discussions and decisions to make way for something bold is fantastic. I was stuck in a rut with the colors at first, much like my writing. But I realized this needed to change. I would have never chosen dragonfruit as my initial color, but I'm happy that it turned into what I ultimately wanted. I was looking to go with a different idea for a logo, but ultimately went with something familiar yet modern. Even better, I'll have a new visual in Drafts for my previews in the future, so the new themes will be everywhere.

I'm happy that this has all worked out for the better. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do. And who knows: maybe there are some stickers and shirts in the future…

I'm not ashamed to admit that there are many times that I doubt myself. I suppose that's the nature of a parent. Or maybe I'm getting older and these are things that happen. Or maybe it's a global pandemic and a global call to end systemic racism. Maybe it's all of these things, and probably a whole lot more. But I find that in these times, I often end up finding my way.

Life, for the most part, has been really great for me. I know that with all that is going on in the world, this is a hard thing to say. But given where I've been over the past few years, I'm in a really good place. The past has given way to new opportunities and better choices for my life. I am in a new relationship that is healthy and fulfilling. I've received not one but two promotions in the last year, and I feel like I'm where I need to be with my job.^[1] I'm even down 20 lbs now, and working on the next 20. I'm starting to hit a stride for my life with which I'm comfortable.

Yet, there were some things that were not happening. My personal projects – my writing and my podcast – have been on hiatus for a while. I felt like my creative energy was zapped, that I didn't have the desire to do these things anymore. I'm not sure if it was depression or a culmination of things, but I just didn't feel creative anymore. I felt unmoored while trying to navigate my creative life.

It's in these times that I turn my focus to my journal, so I can start to figure out what it really is that's driving me. Why am I writing? Why am I podcasting? Do people enjoy this? Does that matter? Who am I writing or speaking to when I share my thoughts? At the end of it all, I have to ask: What's my why? ^[2]

This question set me down multiple paths. I sat alone with my thoughts, figuring out what I wanted to do. My initial thought was to stop. Stop writing. Stop podcasting. Do things for me, and forget it all. I don't owe it to anyone to continue these things. If I don't want to do them, then I can just hang it up and walk away. These thoughts consumed me for weeks.

But in my journaling and even in discussions with others, I found myself pulled another direction. I started thinking of the why for my writing. And really, it comes down to what it started to be: I write for me, and me alone. What I have learned over my time of writing is that people seem to enjoy what I write for myself. I'm honestly shocked most of the time that it even makes sense, people enjoy it, and – much to my shock – it even gets requested at times.

So, I'm going to be doing some things to return to form. I'm starting to write again, and it's pouring out of me. I'm going back to the approach I took when I first started: write for myself, and then publish. Some of my stuff might be small, some of it larger. But it's going to be on the subjects and topics that I want. Over the coming weeks, you'll see some posts about my favorite app Drafts: the posts aren't going to be a regurgitation of the release notes nor will I cover everything. But what I will do is cover particular things that speak to me in the various releases. And this is how I will generally approach most things going forward. If I'm being honest with myself, this is what I should have done all along.

With this renewed focus, I decided to update the site a bit. I commissioned a new look and overhaul of the site from top to bottom, which was done by the amazing Jeff Mueller. I also got to collaborate with Jeff Perry to create a logo for my site. These are two things that I have wanted to do, but did not have the time or the creative energy to develop properly. I'd rather have these things taken care of for me than do them myself, and that's ok. This also helps me recommit to the future of my site, my writing, and my creative life in general.^[3]

I hope that this is a new beginning. By reframing my mind, I'm freeing myself of guilt and returning to the positive mindset that allows me to be creative. I've gone through the questions and come out on the other side with the answers. As I wrote recently:

Sometimes we question what is important. I now realize how vital it is to question – but not doubt – your motives as to why you do something and why you might want to continue. I'm not afraid of this process, but rather I embrace it. Onward…

Onward indeed…

The new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro is now available and starting to appear in reviews. Most of them have been video reviews, but I am starting to see written reviews as well.

In watching the video reviews, my early suspicion of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro was confirmed: I won't be getting it. Not because it's bad, but rather it comes down to a matter of use cases for me. Sure, weight and cost are also factors, but I need to be able to actually use the device if I'm going to make this device a good fit.

Now that I'm working from home for the foreseeable future, I'm using the iPad Pro in a "docked" manner, where it sits off to the right in a stand connected to an external monitor; for input, I use the Logitech K780 keyboard and – new to my home office setup – a Magic Trackpad 2. In this scenario, the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro obviously wouldn't be used, just like my Smart Keyboard Folio sits below my monitor.

I do use my iPad around the house in various ways: handheld, on a table or counter, or to write on. In this way, I could have the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, and just pull it off. I can simply fold the Smart Keyboard Folio around and use it my hand; I am used to the weight now, and it doesn't bother me. I also have a Magic Mouse 2, which I use when I'm away from my home desk, which is small enough to fit in my pocket for me to carry around or use anywhere in the house. So the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro doesn't provide me a benefit here either.

So let's talk about when I'm actually at work. In an office. Remember those times? Anyway, I do go from meeting to meeting in conference rooms. In these scenarios, I'm often at the table in the room where it happens. I often will switch modes depending on what I'm doing: for some meetings I'm able to use my iPad Pro in more of the laptop mode with the Smart Keyboard Folio; in others, I might be writing down notes and focusing on presentations being given. And for those times where I'm not at the table, I'm sitting off to the side where there is no place other than my lap. The Smart Keyboard Folio lends itself to all of these conditions, and affords me the opportunity to use the iPad Pro in any one of those during the course of the day. The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro is sold in a particular way: as a keyboard, not a folio, and is for landscape orientations only. This would hinder the way in which I use the device for my day job.

Looking at all of those use cases together, it really is apparent to me that using my iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio is my best opportunity to meet all things. I can augment the experience when docked, or I can carry around the Magic Mouse 2 when I need to be mobile. It's not always going to be the ideal experience, but it does what I need to get the job done. Also, I already have the components I need, and don't need to spend an additional $300 on something that would be a limited use case for me.

All that aside, I really love the idea of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. The engineering of it seems solid, and it appears to be very well built. The fact that you can charge the device using the built-in port while using another USB-C device in the other is something that I hope gets more extensible over time with software updates. I'm delighted that this device exists: this is the first generation of the device, and it will only get better with feedback and iteration.^[1] The fact that this device exists for everyone is fantastic, so they can choose what works for them. This is what Apple excels at: creating multiple devices in given form factor/class, and providing options for users to suit on their individual needs.

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro looks to be an amazing device, but one thing is clear: this is not for me. And that's OK.