Let Go and Haul: hello 2019!
Week 1, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey
I’m back! Did you miss this? I did! It was also pretty sweet to have two weekends off for the holidays tho. I really needed it. I had some great hangs with fam and dear friends in Ontario and Quebec. Felt p sweet re-entering on that shiny new green card too, not gonna lie. I hope you all had a restful and energizing break!
2018 ended with a bang! We acquired the video app RLY, and they announced how they're joining forces with us at the end of Dec. We’re super excited to give RLY users a home on TRASH (very soon!) and if you’re a RLY user, you can get first dibs on your TRASH username via the app. Read the announcement here.
We have some majorly exciting stuff in the works for 2019 too, not the least of which is a closed alpha coming soon to the app store :) If you’re on this list, you will of course, get early access.
It’s party time! Kofi just threw a TRASH pop-up in Ghana for creators there – our first ever!
If you’re in NYC, we’re doing a gallery show Jan 31 featuring some of the creators who have been using the TestFlight at the IFP Media Center – a video gallery in Brooklyn. There will be a closing party the last Thursday of the month. You, my dear friends, get an invitation to that :) RSVP here, it’s gonna be funnnnn!
If you’re in SF, we’re doing a sister event as part of the Internet Archive’s grand re-opening of the public domain with retro video footage from the archive juxtaposed with the video of today. More details on that coming soon, you can RSVP here.
Let’s get this 2019 thing started!
Journal
Updates were mega this week so this section is gonna be short and sweet!
I thought it might be interesting(?) to share my own personal goal setting “system”. I started deliberately setting annual goals in 2015, and my life has dramatically changed because of it. it’s pretty simple: sometime before the new year, I write down the key things I want to accomplish (and that are realistic to accomplish within a year). I keep them listed by year with the date and place where I wrote them in a note on my phone, so I can see the history. I review them quarterly which I find is enough of a cadence for me to realize when I really need to step on the gas to get things done. Some years they’re just one big goal, other years they’re a bunch of smaller goals. Def come a long way since that super frustrating 2015 and setting intentions for making something…
*tbd, here we are…
This year I also took a moment to write down all my accomplishments of 2018 because I think I need to be more conscious of internally recognizing and validating my own work. It was a nice feeling. I recommend.
Overall I feel like 2018 was a year of regaining confidence in areas that were shaken for me in previous years. I feel more stable and sure of myself than I have in a long time – even though on paper what we’re doing is risky as hell haha. Funny how that works :)
Jams
Guys, I’m totally bored of Spotify rn. I said it. I’ve always been a crate digger for music, using platforms like Soundcloud, Hype Machine, Mixcloud, radio stations (esp the British vibe I miss so much like NTS, Rinse and BBC Radio 6), as well as actual record stores. Somehow though, in 2018 I fell into the trap of listening to my Spotify feeds too much and goddamn is it boring! I feel like I’m suspended in a gooey pond of my own music taste. Nothing is too surprising, distracting or curiosity-creating. 2019 is going to be about finding the new stuff again.
Also, nobody releases music in December. It was so weak I couldn’t even make a December playlist. I tried, I really did. So, here are a few mixes and radio shows I’ve been enjoying recently:
Will Page’s awesome, Full Tilt Boogie 2018. Disco, Balearic funk and sounds of warmth. Shake off winter.
This mix of chill RnB inspired beats by Stripess.
Every single one of these mind bending ear melting mixes by Mobbs that Anthony, Kate and I discovered one night in Quebec. I highly recommend listening to this laying on the floor doing nothing else. This is not really background music…