To understand this idea, we can use two different metaphorical approaches.

The Clews of Life

The first of two possible approaches is what I call the “Clews of Life”. This is a yarn-based metaphor. Note that an Activity on this website could also be regarded as a “node”, which in German is the same word as “knot”, which again is something to be found in a (physical) thread. It all makes sense now!! At least to me. For you, I’ll start at the bottom.

Activities

The main things that I put on this website are called Activities. An Activity is a concrete, time-bound thing I’ve done. For now, I differentiate between two types of Activities:

• Experiences are events I attended, like the Fusion Festival 2019.
• Projects aim to archeive something, like a philosophical essay or to have run a half-marathon.

So Experiences focus on the, well, experience during the Activity, while Projects focus on the result of the Activity.

Each Activity has:

• a name by which it is sorted into alphabetical index (All Activities),
• a month of completion by which it is listed in the Timeline.

Activity Threads

Activities are grouped into Activity Threads, or Threads for short. You can picture them as actual threads of yarn lining up closely related Activities. For now, there are also two different types of Threads:

• Continuous Threads bundle repeated similar Activities like festivals or running days. They do not have a defined ending, but more and more Activities are added to them over time. They can but needn’t have an aim of improvement. An example would be my Running Stats Thread where I publish all my running days (which each are a Project). Projects in a Continuous Thread are also called Standalone Projects.
• Combining Threads bundle only Projects, in cases where they together lead up to a bigger, combined result. This result is then also called a Combined Project. A Combined Project always corresponds to a Thread, not just an Activity. As the Thread leads to this particular result, Combining Threads do always come to a defined ending – eventually. An example would be my Finnish Sanaleikkejä Thread where I compile a collection of all bad puns during my exchange semester in Prague, CZ. For each pun, its documentation is a little Project contributing to the bigger result. The Projects a Combining Thread is composed of are also called Sub-Projects of the Combined Project.

Clews

A clew is a ball of thread, right? So you probably already have a clue (ahem) what Clews do on this website: They group together closely related Threads. Just like Threads bundle Activities, only “one level up”. However, unlike the Activities lined up in a Thread, the Threads in a Clew do not have any particular order; they can exist in parallel to each other, overlap, form knots, whatever you like. All Clews taken together form my life, or at least the part of it that I share with you in the SUCH.CLUB. As one of my favorite authors put it:

Life isn’t neat and tidy. It’s like a whole lot of balls of brightly colored wool thrown in a basket, with stray beginnings and endings and possibilities everywhere.

Color

Threads have color, right? But this is still a todo.

Okay, we have seen that, now let’s look into another topic.

SUCH.CLUB Cards

Another representation of (a subset of) what is going on here on my website is via the SUCH.CLUB Cards. Yes folks, you didn’t think this club would not give out club cards? It does. They just work different.

You won’t get a personalized membership card, but by owning a set of SUCH.CLUB Cards, you can show your dedication to this project all the same. As said, they are not personalized — they are rather a mixture of collectible cards and traditional playing cards.

×

Indeed, just like other playing cards, each SUCH.CLUB Card has a Suit (Color). In this case, suits are fundamental classifications of topics, such as Travel, Physical Health, Music, Emotions etcetera. Suits might be added on-the-fly. Each Suit can be recognized by their individual border color and pip (=icon), the latter giving you an idea of what topic area this Suit represents. The actual name of a Suit is only visible on Series Intro Cards, see next. (Rumor has it that there might be special Cards with even more than one Suit! so exciting!)

×

A concrete blogging topic (called “Ball of Yarn” in my blog, as I use a fluffier metaphor there) is spread over a SERIES of Card decks here. Each series gets a noticable Series Intro Card, so you can easily see that something really new has come out. The Series Intro Card features the name of the series, a picture, a description on the backside, and the name of the suit the series (mainly) belongs to. (As said, you never know! there might be ‘off cards’!) For example, the first series (spoilers ahead!) will be about how I try to establish running again in my life. Thus, its main suit is Physical Health.

×

A smaller, even more connected sequence of blog posts is grouped into a Card DECK. Each Card in a deck is numbered inside the deck and features both the series and deck names on it. (On my blog, within its cotton-y metaphor, we call decks ‘Threads’ that are obvously parts of Balls of Yarn.) Each deck has a Deck Top Card with an image, and additional deck information on the backside. Decks can be released as a whole in one single Instagram post, or with follow-up parts, or each Card in it will be posted individually. It depends on the deck: If there is usually a bunch of cards ready at the same time, or all of them, they are released as a whole. If there is only one new Card in this deck per month, they are released separately. In my Running series, for instance, there is a deck featuring my running stats. As there is only one new Card for each run (=max. twice a week), they are all released individually, but still numbered consecutively.

×

(If you did not fully understand this, do not worry. If you follow me on Instagram, you will get the hang of it. If not, you can stick to this blog version. This page is particularly for those of you who like to have verrrry precise knowledge.)