Thanks for this, I hadn't heard of half of these projects and now I'm also looking into them! Pixelfed in particular look amazing. I have a few friends that have been wanting to rid Instagram so will definitely be sending this their way.

I learned while in university that just sitting down every day and writing something is the way to go. I never need "inspiration", my brain just goes into composing mode and ideas start flowing. But it took a few weeks before that happened.

As for the actual process, I ten to write whatever idea I have down, and see how far it takes me. If it starts veering into something I don't like, I save the file as a new version, delete the part that I didn't like, and start on a new path. In the end I'll have something like 10-20 different versions, sometimes I'll go back to an older one with fresh ideas and continue on a new branch, etc. More than a couple times I'll marry two versions and have the final product nearly finished just by doing that. If I get stuck, sometimes I'll just repeat a section with different instrumentation just to get a fresh take on it which will jog some new ideas.

There are also times where I think strictly "logically" or structurally about a piece. Let's say I've got a nice A section and some nice B section but no way to join them. Then I can reach into my proverbial toolbox and write something that I know will work (a short fugue-like bit, harmonize things to transition smoothly, etc). This is something I enjoy doing because it's like I create two puzzle pieces and have go figure out how to fit them together.

While I'm also a card carrying bike but and plant-based eater, I think that in many places the answer is also better public transport. When I lived in a big city, busses, subway stations, trams, etc were always 5-10 minutes away, both walking and waiting for the next one.

I live in a smaller town now of ~40,000. However, only ~13,000 live in the actual "town", roughly 20 minutes of walking. The rest of the people live anywhere from 10-60km away. Grocery stores can be anywhere from 10-30km away. Iove biking into work when the weather is nice, but it also snows six months out of the year. Even for a "small trip", you're looking at 20km round trip in hilly terrain to the nearest anything that isn't a neighbor. Busses exist, but out in the countryside they'll come twice around 6am and then twice around 6pm, and none at all during weekends. So if you're not working in the middle of the week, you're SOL unless you're prepared to spend 12 hours in town.

It's also a chicken and egg problem though, everyone has a cat because public transport isn't great. But public transport isn't great because there's no demand, because everyone has a car.

This issue is definitely not only in my town, 70% of the country is dotted with small towns like this and the same issues. Not everyone is physically capable of biking 20km on a summers day, let alone in -20°C on a half meter of snow, so they have almost no choice but to drive.

The luxury! It's been a bit of an annoyance for us since we moved out of the town center and into the countryside... If we want to have a night out with drinks involved, either gotta book a taxi or have a nice friend to drive us (or one of us just doesn't drink, but that sort of defeats the purpose of us going out for drinks together...)

The culture here is also just more car-centric. If I bike to work, which honestly is downhill almost all the way, all my coworkers look at me like I'm some Olympic athlete. Like cmon, it takes less than 40 minutes, it's not exactly impressive.

Right on time is the biggest tease of a 3 minute build up to the most disappointing pay off ever.

Didn't notice this feature, thanks!