Jack Cheng's Blog

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced here, in Michigan, an autumn as stunning as this one. Some combination of geography, weather-induced leaf sugars, and Rufus being almost sixteen months old (yes, already). I’m out more during blue hours and golden hours – pack walks in the mornings, afternoon pickups on daycare days when the low angle light catches the tops of trees, afternoon outings when the sunset hits the downtown skyscrapers near the newly opened park on the river.

I have no good pictures....

My former creative director Marty passed away. When I think about jobs I’ve held that were more like true apprenticeships, working under a master, a mentor, Marty’s name is the first to come to mind. From a brief tribute I wrote on Instagram:

It was working under Marty Cooke that I first saw myself as a professional writer. Because he saw me as one. He taught me it was okay, sometimes necessary, to spend a month writing and rewriting a single paragraph till you found a new way to say something fa...

A short documentary project I’ve been working on for Building Beauty is finally live: A tour of a house Christopher Alexander designed for two writers, Ann Medlock and John Graham, in Washington State.

This has been in the works since late last year! I did all of the editing/post-production, and what stands out to me now, ten months later, is just how much film editing experience I’d gained between the first and final cuts.

The biggest lesson was concision. That first cut was over 18 minutes; ...

I tried to sit down and do another of my intermittent daily routine check-ins, but everything I wrote was more or less about Rufus’s schedule. We’ve heard from friends that for the first year you have a new-parental brain fog – from lack of sleep, stress, hormonal changes, etc. It takes that long, they said, to feel like yourself again.

Other parents have said two years. Or longer. But I have been noticing expansions, lately, in my attentional bandwidth. One way I can describe it is self-awarenes...

Every Friday at noon, Julia and I have a household meeting. Like these newsletters, it doesn’t always happen on the week, but we try nonetheless. Topics include our shared calendar, Rufus’s developmental milestones, house and garden projects, dates, social plans, etc. House Meeting is when we check in on existing tasks, delegate new tasks, and, when one or both of us is stuck, help each other get unstuck. How did we even manage before we had House Meeting? I don’t remember.

One big house meeting ...

Rufus turned a year old this month. He can stand on his own now and is piecing together the motions of walking unsupported. He can be wild at times, especially right before bed, but can also play quietly by himself. He’s adventurous – and cautious too. In other words, he’s becoming a full little human, contradictions and all.

This past week we went Up North (that’s Michigander for the northern tip of the lower peninsula) to spend time with Julia’s family. I’d intended to use the time to read, ref...

What started out as video editing for a couple of part-time gigs has turned more into video production, shooting, and—new for me—directing. In my day-to-day I’m pretty conflict-avoidant. I tend to people-please and keep my real opinions to myself, especially in new social situations.

But that doesn’t work in a shoot. I have to be clear about what I want. I can’t hesitate to stop in the middle of a take and ask to run it again because of a wrong (but important) line, because it only wastes my and ...

This weekend we went to a plant expo to pick up some native perennials for our garden, and spent all weekend planting said perennials and tidying up the beds along our fence. Since my last letter I’ve also done my year’s first pair of volunteer toward my Extension Master Gardener certification. My legs are sore but my soul is content.

I tend to overcommit to things (if you haven’t learned that about me already). I’d put an embargo on new projects during the first two weeks of June and have alread...

Last letter I forgot to include what was maybe the biggest thing on my mind when I was in China: the stark difference in cost of living, even compared to a smaller American city like Detroit. In places like Shanghai there are luxury malls abound, sure, but you can also live comfortably on much, much less. One teacher I talked to said that they didn’t realize how much financial stress they carried until they started teaching in China and the burden was suddenly lifted. Another teacher called thei...

I’m in Hainan, China, having just last week crested the hill of a slate of author visits. Wednesday was my busiest day; I did three events at two schools – and all three of those events different kinds of talks and workshops. I had this weekend off with my dad in sunny, humid Hainan, and took full advantage.

Every time I’m in China I play the game of What’s different than before? In my last core sample from March of 2019, I wrote:

If this is the future, then it’s a deeply complicated – and in ways...