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3 Nerdy Songs + Thinking Out Loud (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-26 19:01:01
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

(4 min of reading, 6 min of music)

Note: this Patreon is still paused, and you won’t be charged until further notice!

Hi new Patrons!  Welcome, and my deepest thanks! <3  I assume most of you are here from the new Veritasium video.  (If you haven’t seen it, my Fireflies was on their latest video on the math of self-organization. 🔥🐛 )

Anyway, thanks for putting up with the melodrama from my last post.  My physical and mental health are better now!  Besides improving sleep/diet and scheduling calls with friends, I’ve also made time to learn new hobbies & art.

In particular: making music!  This is a skill I’ve wanted to learn for years, since it was the *one* part of game development I was missing. (I could already code, animate, design, and write – just add music, and I’d be an all-in-oner like Toby Fox?)

This past month, I finally got off my butt & took Andrew Huang’s one-month, hands-on online course on music-making. (Also the first online course I’ve ever taken, incidentally)

I’m proud of... two of the three songs I made!

Each one’s 2 minutes long.  Here ya go:

🚀⏱ THE SPECIAL RELATIVITY SONG 

Fine, even when I try to do non-work hobbies, I still make "educational" stuff. But, I grew up with nerdcore music, so here’s a song on Special Relativity. (And I might make a music video for it later! Maybe it’ll be fun to play in classrooms, I dunno.)

🦆🔥 DUCK DESCENDING TO HELL IN AN ELEVATOR 

Exactly what you’d expect it to sound like.

📖👾 STUDY FIRST, THEN VIDEOGAMES 

The song I’m *not* proud of, because I severely underestimated how hard it is to make 8-bit synths that don’t sound like a dying squirrel? My respect for chiptune artists has grown immensely.

(Want to download all these songs?  Here's a Patreon-exclusive .zip!  I'll publish them later more "officially" under a Creative Commons Zero license)

. . .

Still unsure when I’m coming back from burnout-induced hiatus & un-pausing this Patreon.  I’m going to think out loud here, because:

1. You wanted to see my behind-the-scenes psychological mess, right? That’s why you signed up, right?


2. I genuinely want your thoughts & feedback on this! I’m sure many of you have had, or are having, similar problems.


3. Writing helps me organize the brain-bees. 🐝 

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved, so, here’s my problem statement:

  • People have (roughly) 3 fundamental needs: Physical, Social, Growth.

  • As privileged and lucky as I am to have my Zeroth World Problems, I was not meeting those 3 needs via my previous work/life-style: working alone, making the same genre of "content" over and over, not making enough time for friends/hobbies.

  • The pandemic, as it did for many of us, made social life & mental health far harder.

  • Making educational content, when the world's policymakers & major news outlets can't seem to grasp ideas like "fractions" or "costs & benefits", feels like I'm pissing in the wind and seriously what's even the point anymore. (Tying to the 3 Needs framework: I'm not meeting my Social need for "effectively contributing to others' well-being", and my Growth need for "not doing stuff that feels like pissing in the wind".)

Given the stated problem, 4 possible, not-mutually-exclusive solutions:

1. Hibernate until pandemic is over.


2. Make work fulfill my Growth needs more.  I branch out from Explorable Explanations, and make more "boring", traditional media like songs or video or original research papers or erotic monster comics.  I focus less on what's beyond my direct influence (i.e. policymakers, news outlets), and just focus on my (& my friends' & fans') mental Growth.  This Patreon becomes "The Nicky Case Variety Show".


3. Make work fulfill my Social needs more.  I find ways to collaborate with friends on projects.  Or host mini-salons/workshops for friends around learning (via videocall for now, obviously).  This Patreon becomes not just a single person, but a studio.


4. Just work less.  Maybe combining my work with my social life & hobbies is like combining the the bedroom with the washroom.  Different needs should just have different space/times.  This Patreon becomes a side-hustle.

Given that each solution has upsides & downsides, and no combination of them seems obviously right to me yet, I’ll just have to experiment.  Possible experiments for next 2 or 3 months:

  • Keep learning music or other new skills (e.g. singing, statistics)
  • Jam with friend(s) on a small project
  • Sew a partial fursuit

And my experiments’ outcome measure is: "Am I actually excited to wake up and embark on a new day and drink from the cup of Life".  Standard metric.

[ 8000+ WORDS REMOVED – I originally wrote up a list of project ideas that have been on my mind for months or years, but I went overboard, so I'll split them up over 2 posts next month. Stay tuned! ]

Let me know what you think about these thoughts, and possible futures for this Patreon: variety show, studio, and/or side-hustle?  Also, enjoy the songs!

Stay Safe, Y'all. 💖

~ Nicky Case

Files

Previews only

Comments

Jesper Cockx

I'd be happy with any of the four options, but to be honest the idea of the Nicky Case Studio sounds awesome!

Rev Storm

Jamming with friends on a small project sounds most interesting to me, and the best for your health! It also levels up your skills, so if you do come back to Explorables you'll be able to do more with them. I wasn't expecting any of your music to also have vocals, that's really awesome!! Love the different voices used throughout. I've been finally making music too lately, and it's really encouraging to see someone else diving into it. (Also, duck song gives me big 90s comedy game vibes, I love it.)

Christine Capra

Nicky - Big fan of thinking out loud! And I'm going to go out on a limb here: I LOVE your explainer-things. There's conceptual overlap between what you've been trying to do (with your pissing into the wind) and what I/my little company have been trying to do (which also often feels like pissing into the wind). You're a billion times better at making graphic explanations of complex topics than I am, and there have been times when I've YEARNED for you to make an explanation of something that would help make our work clearer. And we're maybe a few hairs closer to actual impact (there ARE real change networks in the world that use our tools/maps) than you sound like you feel you are. And so my out-there proposal is this: we could try collaborating on something. We could just start with a conversation to see if together we could meet some of your social need. Plus I have a whole community who might want to play in a mini-salon in the overlap of our areas of interest. Here's a link that explains our work (and if you poke around, you'll get a good sense of me/us, our thing, how we piss into the wind. . . & if you have any interest in farting around together ) https://greaterthanthesum.com/what-is-social-system-mapping/ I'm guessing you can find my email if you want to talk. And in any case - glad you're doing what you need to do to take care of yourself & want you to do whatever makes you most happy!

MerchantOfSoul

I'd have to +1 the studio idea. I was a learning experience designer for about 8 years and I'm currently a front-end developer. When I think about my dream job, it's bringing those two things together into creating explorable explanations, so that's one of the things I'm trying to work on in my personal projects (which I've also just ramped back up after hitting my pandemic wall). It would be amazing to see how you approach finding collaborators and working together. That said, I'd be happy to support whatever allows you to bring your authentic, healthy self, including doing less stuff. Also, I fancy the duck song 🐥

Krakenova

Hi Nicky! You said you were really curious so here it is :) I am a journalist, usually high stress, overachievers job. I used to think me == my work. I went on hiatus for 2 months (traveling in Japan back when ..) and I realized me != my work. Plunged into identity crisis. Got a fulltime job. Stopped fulltime job. In the end realized: working less is what works for me. 20-30 hours per week TOPS. I still feel marginally guilty hearing my overworked colleagues complain about the work pressure. But really I am happy I can spend the rest of the time doing random stuff. Even if it's just pulling out tree seedlings out of the garden beds smelling flowers listening to birds songs feeling the sun on my face. Talking to people I love. And being relaxed actually allows me to focus on work better. You are really awesome and smart and all and I love stuff you do. Foremostly because it's how you do you. And I think a bit of a slack allows us to do ourselves better (no pun intended but why not! ,)

XF

I'm in a corporate tech job that never did a ton for my Growth needs (at least, not in the directions I care the most about growing in). It used to give my Social needs a little bit of fuel when I was still in an office having watercooler chats with clever interesting colleagues, but now, welp... I feel increasingly sure that I need out, and I still have no idea what that looks like, but I want the stuff I do for money to be more compatible with the person I want to be, and having friends along with me while I do it also feels valuable. If I can get away with spending less time/energy on paid work, and spending more time just doing things that fulfill my social and growth needs directly, that also feels desirable for sure. I've been listening to a band called Seeming a lot, this past year especially. One of their newest songs is called Go Small: (cw sui mention) https://seeming.bandcamp.com/track/go-small It's about working with what's around you and not trying to take on the entire world's problems, because you just can't; that's been on my mind lately. "Write the song you need to hear" is an interesting thought, and I don't know what that looks like for me yet, but I'm also literally trying to learn instruments and pick up some music theory :p (I'm actually really glad I read your post because now I want to check out that songwriting class!) I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but I can say that about my entire life, so *shrug*. I hope we both find paths that work well for us; and I appreciate hearing how you're doing and what you're up to when you're in a mood for sharing <3

Miles

Definitely prioritize yourself first. Doing what brings you joy and growth are important. From your thinking out loud, it sounds like the side hustle might make provide the most opportunity for that, but just my $0.02. You can also try an option for a couple months and see if it works.

Danny Hansen

"erotic monster comics" sounds like fun

Jean-Michel Laprise

Sounds like you're asking all the right questions, which gives me hope you'll find a happy solution! I just wanted to say that I think your educational content works at a level where it's very effective but with an impact that's hard for you to see. I shared your explainers with many people, and I saw them finally grasp a concept that had been abstract until then. Your explainers actually changed their world view (and mine before that!), and world views affect people's behavior. You're not affecting the deciders directly, but you are subtly changing part of society by helping them grasp complex issues. When I share your explainers, I feel good, because I feel like I'm doing a small thing to help. Which logically means that when you made and shared them, you did a bigger thing to help. And that means that you deserve to feel good about making them too. I know that deserve to feel and actually feel are very different things that don't always match up... but it's still good to think about. :-) P.S. This is definitely not a "Please do explainers, the world needs you, ignore your needs" thing... Prioritising your happiness is way more important. I just wanted to counter that "pissing in the wind" feeling.

Dave Cortright

Seriously, you need to un-pause ASAP. You're creating worthy content.

ncase
>>58550145

Thank you! Singing in femmevoice was hard, need to practice that more

Tyler Beatty

"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. ... Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night."

Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)
>>58558317

Thanks for sharing this song. Going small is a lesson I'm very slowly learning. It definitely goes counter to big tech culture which is all about maximizing "impact". And yet doing work that affects millions of people still can feel like not enough...

yves.

I'm happy with whatever! I know you from games, but I've yet to be upset by any of your updates. These songs in particular are really fun; it's great to see all kinds of content from you!

Chris K

Hi Nick! I think ... nothing. LIfe is hard. I wish I could help you decide. I cannot. But I can tell you the time-old encouragement: you do you. songwise, Special Relativity sounded like Sesamestreet for Nerds. Which is excellent :D Playful, nice rhymes, whimsy! Cheersi!