Notes from the margin

There is a temptation to turn every experiment into a case study. A screenshot, a stack, a lesson with a neat ending. Some of them deserve that. Most of them need a quieter room.

Margin started because I wanted to read an essay without the browser chrome arguing with the type. One column. A wide margin. Notes that stay next to the paragraph that provoked them.

Unfinished, on purpose

The sync is clumsy. The export is a markdown file I send to myself. I am keeping it in the lab, marked in progress, until the reading feels quieter than the tool.

When something is made for a client, unfinished is a broken promise. When it is made for me, unfinished can be the honest state. The stage on the door is the point: idea, in progress, shipped, or parked. No experiment gets to lurk without a label.

The rule I use is short. If someone else is waiting on it, it belongs in the studio. If I am the only audience, it stays in the lab.

That split is what lets the journal exist at all. The writing can talk about work that is not ready to be a portfolio piece, because the portfolio piece has another room.