Jules John

about

  • One Thousand Words or Less

    Yes, that includes subtitles, too. 

    I am one week into (almost two weeks as I finish this piece) a glorious six week summer holiday which started as a whirlwind mix of partying, karaoke, and movie-going.  I’m grateful to be able to celebrate the year’s end like this, as previously I have ended the teaching year with a major crash landing. I think that when the adrenaline of the job finally drops off, the body has a natural reaction to finally curl up and be sick. I’ll be honest, I did somewhat fight through a real need to crash, but I managed to get a solid week of fun out of life whilst more or less abusing my body. (Sorry body!). After the initial celebration, I was able to have a few rest days to catch up, with lots and lots of sleep, and without actually getting sick. Excellent!  However, after the week that was, I have entered a nice chill pace of life which I’m happy to sit on for the time being.

    It’s another acclimatisation. I suppose the natural flow of things, and the comedown was always inevitable. You really squeeze the juice of life when you’re out and about, but sometimes I find it harder to avoid distractions amongst the silence of time at home. I certainly don’t feel the need to scroll Tinder or TikTok whilst I am on a date, or hanging out with friends, but the background whirr of anxiety starts to amp up when I am by myself. I think that anxiety partly stems from, of course, the addictive nature of the attention economy we find ourselves in, but it is certainly something we can take measures to control as individuals. Working towards balance in this world will itself be a balance of system-wide changes, and grassroots individual rebellions. 

    With regards to combatting my anxiety, I do take formal measures such as therapy and a small dose of escitalopram which helps, but besides these I think another good antidote to the doomscroll malaise is the act of developing a sense of purpose in your personal life. Like a hobby, or, something of a mindful plan.  A cue the drumroll, please…‘SMART plan’, because we know that all plans don’t really guarantee success. Whilst somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I do think looking into some planning tools can really help us follow through on becoming who we really want to be. 

    I have been journalling for upwards of 10 years now. It’s mostly just day to day reflections, but I do set a few yearly goals in each journal. And for this year that was (2025) I set the lofty goal of updating this very blog once every month! Which, evidently, did not come to pass. I’m not really the type to beat myself up if I don’t reach a certain goal or milestone I have set for myself, but I do want to spend the rest of this piece dissecting a couple of key problems which I think held me back from achieving this goal. 

    Problem 1 ~~ Perfectionism

    The truth is, I have been stuck on the same piece for about two or three months. It’s a bit of a mishmash of critiquing productivity culture, and also reenvisaging how we engage in leisure activities. However, I think the scope of the piece has gone far beyond the intended purposes of this blog. I was bringing in multiple references from primary and secondary texts, podcasts and philosophers, and, of course, weaving in Michel Foucault’s discipline and punishment wherever I could. And, somewhat ironically, I was working hard on a piece that was about leisure, and joy, and gaining energy from creative pursuits. I don’t know, I think your proof’s gotta be in the pudding itself. I want my writing to be my life embodied, not some type of stale recipe or manual. It just wasn’t it. 

    Solution 1 ~~ The 80% Rule

    Simple is best! I kind of forgot that writing a blog can be this casual ‘sounding-board-for-your-thoughts’ type thing. I think for the most part, perfectionism kind of gets in the way of most creative pursuits. Sure, we can hone our craft and develop over time, but it’s just gotta feel good along the way. Even this *this right here* feels good. Low stakes writing is a joy.

    Problem 2 ~~ Length

    I have always known that length isn’t the be all and end all, and I suppose I was initially aiming for roughly sub 1000 words in my previous piece. The problem is, the piece just kept getting away from me. It currently sits closer to 3000 words, and that is after a good amount of editing and trimming down. I knew that the piece could be split into coherent sections, but I didn’t think to actually do that (which I might do going forward!), and instead kept snowballing it into something ‘bigger’ and ‘better’.

    Solution 2 ~~ Brevity and Action. 

    On this note, I want to officially ‘lock in’ my writing goal for 2026. It will be similar to my 2025 goal (a blog post every month), but with the new and improved, streamlined addendum of keeping it to 1k words or less. I even like that as an unofficial tagline! I think 1000 words is ideal both in terms of how long it takes me to write, and how long it will take others to read

    Summary

    I think a defining tenet of where I wanted my creative output to be headed in my late 20’s and into my 30’s is that you can be a working professional and make art. In fact, I think it is important for so many reasons: for the individual’s creator’s mental health, to share multiple perspectives into our societal discourse, and to practice good work-life balance and happiness – which all people deserve across the globe. 

    Anyway, no-one reads blogs anymore, but, I think if they were to read a blog, they would prefer to read one that’s 1000 words or less. 

    And yes, you bet I’m going to break my own rule from the get-go. 

    Signing off at 1040 words.

    With love, 

    -Jules

  • New Beginnings in Familiar Spaces

    I’m quite excited to be returning to this humble little blog in 2025, which I actually started over a decade ago for a uni assignment. Upon returning, I’ll be taking it into ‘my own’ direction, in the sense that it was originally intended as place to post assignments and experiment with online spaces. With that said, I really want to keep the original posts I wrote untouched. There are about 10 posts in the 2014-era of this blog, and they range from musings about AI, to photographic ‘colour journeys’ I took in my old neighbourhood. They’re all available in the ‘archive’ section of this blog. Instead of completely revamping this whole blog, I prefer the idea of adapting it as something pre-existing; a sense of adaptability I want to inform my life within, and beyond the blog. On top of that, those original posts haven’t aged too terribly either… i.e., they’re not too bad for something a relatively naïve 19 year old put together! For those curious, this blog was originally made for a neat media and communication subject called Exploring Media Arts, which was run by my professor at the time, Dr. David Hughes. Interestingly, the original WordPress site for the Exploring Media Arts subject is still up, and is well worth checking out; a literal treasure trove of 2014-era internet magic.

    Looking back, I am really grateful for having those old assignments under my belt, and in particular for the marvellous ideas and beautiful people I was exposed to throughout my uni years. Despite this, there was a long time in the mix where I was disenfranchised with my creative efforts. Perhaps wrongly, I thought they served only the purpose of fulfilling an endless set of criteria to further my formal studies. I saw that being ‘assigned’ creative work was ipso facto creation for others, and therefore an inauthentic form of creation. Eventually, I did set out to ‘right’ this perceived ‘wrong’ by going forth and… well, simply writing and making music – just a bit of fun! Thankfully, this did remedy some of my initial frustration. However, simply having the time and space to reflect was the true impetus in allowing greater perspective on the matter. I mean, the truth is that I was privileged enough to have an education which did allow me ample room for freedom and exploration. Whilst it wasn’t freedom of the absolute kind, those perceived restrictions were only really subtle guides to help me grow in specific areas. It makes sense in terms of ‘creative theory’, for as Orson Welles so aptly put, ‘the enemy of art is the absence of limitations’. The guidelines our educators conceive are, of course, set up to engender the creative success of their students, and I say this both as reflection, and as aspiration. Reflection in that I will always be a student (of something!). Aspiration in that I am now a high school teacher! So now my internal dialectic surrounding creative freedom versus structure can continue on the other side of the classroom. 

    Anyway, back to me reclaiming this blog – I will be writing under the relatively anonymous moniker Jules John, but I do want to share some key details about my identity beyond my job title. The short of it is that I am a 29 year old Australian man, writing on Wurrundjeri Country in the Kulin Nation – in the north west of Melbourne. I come from a third-generation Italian-Maltese background, but I really wanted to learn a third language instead, and actually now speak fluent Japanese. This is all to the detriment of me knowing any conversational level Maltese or Italian, but that’s a conversation for another day. Needless to say, I am very proud of my Japanese language abilities! I did do some media studies at uni, but my academic background is primarily in Philosophy and Japanese. I’m also an amateur writer and musician! The Jules John handle was originally for my music, but now I’m starting to see it as a bit of a catch-all for content I’d like to create and share online. I do have an inclination to be constantly jumping between projects, so I see this act of sticking with the one moniker as another example of adaptation, reuse, and creative flexibility. Again, I want these to be key themes central to this project; along with exploration, understanding, and enjoyment!

    I think it is clear that creation and expression are important to me as a fundamental human right that everyone should be able to engage in. Creativity is not only a powerful tool for learning and belonging, but is essential to both mere survival and resisting various forms of oppression. For me, this type of writing is one way of manifesting and nurturing these human instincts. Insofar as writing itself, I enjoy not only the process, but also appreciate the cognitive benefits of having to slowly and carefully considered various lines of thinking and logic. The idea of developing a (hopefully) elegant and thoughtful product also motivates me, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be writing. Whilst I don’t see myself going so far as being a ‘podcast bro’, I do want to extend my creativity to various media. I also don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver, so my intention is simply to have a space ready to share when I feel the inclination. I’ll be aiming for quality over quantity here. So here we are in 2025, rekindling this creative space into something I am looking forward to bringing to life. Maybe I will even look back here again with the same nostalgia and joy in ten more years time.

    Thanks for reading, and I hope you can stick around. 🙂

    Lot’s of love,
    Jules