PHRANTONE 10-2023

18 April 2023

Dear Phriends,

This issue has been a real doozie for me! Seldom have I had to summon so much willpower for taking my own advice:
"If you treat everything like it's precious, you'll never have any breakthroughs."

My intention here in #10-2023 is to share a resource I’ve developed for the computation of reality: the STFU journal. I explain its use on the flip side of this page.

When I started putting this issue together, however, I became paralyzed by perfectionism. Weeks went by as I drafted and rewrote. I prototyped. I refined. I devised new methods for stamp-printing. Still, it came out messier than my vision. As time marched forward, the perfect earned its reputation as the enemy of the good.

It wasn’t until I asked a friend for help that I could see how preciously I was treating it.

Da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, it’s only abandoned.”
I’m shipping this now not because it’s perfect. I’m shipping it because I know that when I hold too tightly to what could yet be, I can neither share in the beauty of what is nor discover the joy of what lies ahead.

I have faith that there are a bunch of great Phrantones ahead around the bend. I think you’ll find this one’s pretty good, too.

Frankie