A New Role at MacStories

You might remember that a couple of months ago, I joined the team at MacStories when my podcast, Magic Rays of Light, became a part of the site’s family of shows. The response to that move has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, and I can’t say thank you enough.

Now, I’m grateful to make another announcement: I’ve taken on a new role at MacStories in addition to podcast host. I’m helping out with editing stories for the website and Club MacStories! I’ve been lending a hand behind-the-scenes for a couple of weeks now and am absolutely loving it.

It’s an honor to get to work with our excellent writers so closely and help them in a small way to get their stories out there. I’ve held MacStories and its team in such high regard for so long; it’s a dream come true to have the chance to take part in that work.

I’m incredibly excited to share this news with you and even more excited to take on this new role. It’s been so inspiring and fulfilling already, and this is only the beginning.

You can check out the work that the MacStories team is doing at MacStories.net and on Club MacStories. That’s where I’ll be – in addition to Magic Rays of Light and here, of course.

Thank you for reading and for all of your continued support. It means so much. Here’s to new challenges and exciting things ahead!

Six Months

My son turns six months old today, his half-birthday. How has it already been this long? Where has the time gone? When people told me it would go by too quickly, I knew it was true. I just couldn’t imagine how true it would be.

Seeing Noah grow, change, and learn these past six months has been the greatest pleasure. Nothing brings me more joy than knowing that he’s happy and thriving. He is such a blessing to me and to everyone he meets.

These first six months with my son have been the best of my life. Here’s to many more.

Ebbs and Flows

I’ll be honest: I’m still not over our announcement a couple of weeks ago that Magic Rays of Light has joined MacStories. It’s so exciting and a huge honor to be part of such a great team. I’ve had to pinch myself a few times just to make sure that it’s real.

The announcement came alongside a stream of creative output on my part. I published my first articles for MacStories and MacStories Weekly. We shared a huge episode of the podcast to coincide with the announcement. And I got to share a shortcut I’ve been working on for a while that I’m really happy with. It was a productive week—in the literal sense that I produced a lot of stuff I’m proud of—and it was awesome.

Since then, things have been quieter. I’ve gone a couple of weeks without posting here, which is longer than normal. I honestly haven’t written much of anything, aside from show notes and my daily journaling. It’s like that part of my brain took a break and my usual, “I have to blog about this!” impulses haven’t been as strong.

To be fair, I have been focused on making the podcast and adjusting to new ways of doing things on the backend. And work responsibilities have taken up a good deal of my time and energy, not to mention being present with my family. It’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I just haven’t been writing, and that’s been bugging me.

But should it? Creative energy ebbs and flows, and it shifts to different focuses at different times. Other things have to take priority due to external commitments and, you know, needing to work so I can pay my bills.

I’ve done my best to remove any and all “should”s from this place and just let it be whatever I want it to be. No pressure, just something to enjoy, share, and hope that others enjoy as well. That’s what a personal blog is for.

So I guess I’m writing all of this (1) to explain why things have been quiet here for a bit and (2) to convince myself that that’s okay. It’s alright to take some time off, purposefully or otherwise. So long as I keep to the commitments I’ve made, I can go with the flow on the rest.

I get the feeling that the flow is pushing me back in this direction and that I’ll have more to share here soon. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been tinkering with another shortcut.) Either way, I’m happy to be along for the ride, and I hope that you are, too.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out anytime or say hi on social media. I’m usually around, even if I’m quiet, and I’d love to hear from you.

Watch History Journal →

Alongside this week’s Magic Rays of Light—our first as part of MacStories—we debuted Watch History Journal, a shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app.

From my writeup in the latest edition of MacStories Weekly:

Watch History Journal uses your Trakt profile to generate images of titles you’ve watched on a given day and share them to your journaling app of choice. Run it once a day when you’re finished watching (or set it up as a personal automation that runs in the background before bed), and it will create a journal entry that includes everything you’ve watched. It integrates with Day One, Everlog, and the Journal app…

This shortcut rounds out Apple’s journaling suggestions system for me and turns my journal into a true one-stop shop for what I’m doing, experiencing, thinking, and making. I love journaling in this way.

If you’d like to try Watch History Journal for yourself, you can download it here. And for more details about how it works and how it was made, check out MacStories Weekly: Issue 401 featuring my article along with a lot of great writing from my new colleagues.

Thank you for following along with what has been just an incredible week. I’m so grateful to be where I am, and the best part is that this is only the beginning.

MacStories →

Yours truly, writing at MacStories:

Today is an exciting day for Magic Rays of Light. We couldn’t be happier that our show is joining the MacStories family of podcasts. Before the first episode of this new era releases on Wednesday, we thought we’d take a moment to introduce ourselves and the show to you.

I am thrilled to be joining the MacStories team! It’s a site and a team that I’ve revered for years, so it’s an honor to come aboard. Sigmund and I will continue producing the podcast we love to make, now under the MacStories banner.

There are a lot more details up on MacStories now, including our new release schedule and the announcement that Federico and John are making a guest appearance on the show this week. We got to join in on the latest episode of AppStories as well, which still feels unreal.

It’s a great day and the start of an exciting new phase for Magic Rays of Light. My sincere thanks to everyone who’s supported the show thus far by listening, sharing, and offering feedback. It means the world. I’m so grateful for our wonderful listeners, and I’m hoping I’ll get to meet some newcomers to the show this week.

Our next episode comes out this Wednesday, and there’s plenty more to come after that, so stay tuned! This is going to be fun.