Another essay I put on Medium back in ’18. Worldbuilding gone awry; or, when the world is building the author:
Not that your crazy wall would look like this. But then there’s maintenance. So you collaged clippings, notes, and printouts and used pins and color-coded threads to fully materialize your mind map. Everything is stuck on with putty, forming a neat pyramid wherein the street-level washouts and mob hands that supply your gumshoe with suspects and leads percolate up to the — gasp —former ally that’s behind it all. Then you realize you’re basically writing Watchmen and the pyramid has to be rearranged into the Seal of Babalon because the microwave told you that’s the only good defense against evil spirits.
Here’s what you should do instead: spread your note-taking across cloud-based software and a jumble of papers yellowing out since college. Scribble hastily on your day job notebook, unconspicuously so no one notices. You can also turn it upside down and start a second notebook on the last page, mirroring your warped bifurcated mind life. But if you don’t, tear out the page immediately before anyone sees. Then fold it four-ways so it fits in the e-book reader pouch. When in need, unfold until you reach a blank flap and fill it up. Soon you‘ll have a paper fortune-teller. Once you unravel it to add it to your jumble, you’ll notice your notes have to be turned around to be read. That’s because they have become multi-dimensional.
the Budafoki amended 