Welcome to Jesh, Annotated

(Formerly, Drawers and Pockets) and how my knowledge management system, as an information hoarder and a quasi-researcher, is becoming my personality. (this space is for you if you like hoarding nuggets and fillets of information).

Another season, another long overdue restructuring.

Here's a quick recap of how my art project has evolved:

• (2015) (name redacted, I will not elaborate) - The dark ages, the embarrassment, and the perfect balance of cringe and edgy, and snob. (oh my god if you remember this era please don’t un-"redacted"). I left this era along with all my audacity to write and publish long form.
• (2017-ish) /zeen/ not /zign/ - Less of an embarrassment but more rage
• (2020-2023) gap year
• (2023) Drawers and Pockets - in my Marie Kondo era of decluttering my thoughts

I am not retiring Drawers and Pockets. It's more of, expanding. From the mess of junk drawer-like notes and pocketful of lists and dumps (which I never posted btw), it's time to have a structured counterpart, with Desks and Shelves (I am, once again reiterating, not fixated with IKEA).

As someone who loves to learn, I tend to hoard information and contexts. But similar to the tangible items and trinkets I hoard, they get shoved into the drawers (which will never see the light of day), turning into a whole lot of mess. The same goes with the handy dandy information I am expecting to be inside my pocket but most of the time I get to pull out receipts and bus tickets that are not relevant. I hope you see the picture because I am simply rambling and the mess in my head is similar to the tangible/physical mess I have.

From Drawers and Pockets, this is where Desks and Shelves come in. For context, this shift came from when I did some overhaul in my digital organization system. Yea, sorry I tried PARA and ACCESS and other stuff the productivity space has introduced but with some tweaks, I figured something that is actually for me.

I am now organizing my digital notes/archives in analogy to how I interact with my resources and notes in a tangible setting (and I love using furniture items to describe it):

• Desks - Work gets done here, including files for active projects, journaling, writing, etc.
• Shelves - Sorted out resources. Including notes from books, films, courses, talks, etc. Which I know I will use or write something about
• Drawers - Yea, the junk drawer. This is where the archives and the "for later" notes reside.
• Pockets - For handy dandy reference/notes. Personal wiki of practical things I surely need from time to time e.g., operating hours of establishments in my area, memory log of the food I hated so I won't be fooled with its fancy name again, expiration dates of my pantry items, etc.

With this in mind, I think it's also fair to expand Drawers and Pockets (as in the art project). I've been struggling a lot in creating in the past few years, I figured I haven't hoarded enough but it turns out it's long overdue for me to put things into existence again. It felt like I'd been inhaling and inhaling without exhaling, and it’s been a while since I intentionally sat down and heard my thoughts because I was drowning in stimulation and distraction.

To capture the balance of hoarding, processing, and creating, I am re-introducing this project with a new name, "Jesh, Annotated". So what will you see in the future?

• Mini essays on books, films, theater, etc., and correlating them to other contexts and experiences while getting distracted and going off-tangent.
• A little bit of drawings? Attempt on graphic diary perhaps.
• Probably going back to poetry.

We shall see what else in the future. Alright, that's it for now, see you next time.

-Jesh