Part of building a creative practice is being intentional with the tools I use, so here is a working list.
Pen and Paper
I try to start my day with Morning Pages (shoutout Julia Cameron), three pages of uninterrupted stream of conscious writing, no editing, no revising. It helps pull things out of my head that would normally just derail my day. Then throughout the day I keep an analog to-do list.
Obsidian
From there I try to move things into my Obsidian vault. I use markdown files to organize the business of operating a creative studio. This is definitely a work-in-progress and probably worth its own post eventually.
Figma
It makes da shapes.
Adobe Suite
Still in the rotation. Pirating a cracked version of Photoshop off of Limewire in the early 2000s was a defining moment for teenage me. RIP dreamweaver.
Calmwriter
If you struggle with creating a focused environment for writing like I do, Calmwriter is for you. I think it’s important to create space for writing that is disconnected from AI and Calmwriter is just enough text editor for me — beautifully minimal with markdown support, can’t recommend it enough.
Claude
This also probably warrants an entire post. For better and worse LLMs are here to stay. It’s super useful for some things and categorically unfit for others. Your AI flyer sucks.
Astro
I was mostly comfortable in HTML/CSS and recently made the jump to Astro for my sites and I’ve been loving it.