QWERTY: W̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ experiment, w̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ go dreamy

A refrain / exasperated complaint repeating in my mind: “We never get any time to experiment, we never get to go dreamy, or anything...”

Hi all, as some of you know, I do the majority of my writing on my publication SEEDS these days. I’m ramping that up, and hope you enjoy it: profiling tactical learnings from companies and operators in the ANZ tech space, and I intend to do some good writing there. Plenty of interesting angles upcoming too, you can see that here: https://www.seeds.how/

I had previously intended to split my curated writing efforts half on SEEDS and half on this one: GROUPED, as part of my GROUP GROUP suite of storytelling stuff. But then I decided I was just complicating it, and I really wanted to streamline it nicely

So with GROUPED I’ll just write it as a blog of sorts, sharing some interesting anecdotes and occurrences, plus I’ll do a whole thing of sharing how it’s going growing SEEDS.

But, I can pinpoint one nagging thing that kept me resisting from moving in a certain direction previously, and would also end up being a limiting factor in being able to decide how this all worked together. That being a need for creative expression, and how I build that in to what I do as I ‘career’.

I was reminded very recently about this BTS quote from the late great David Lynch (after realising it was the 34-year anniversary of his cult classic: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.)

I miss David Lynch’s presence a lot actually. Never a mega fan of all his work, but overall a huge admirer of his vision, and he’ll be a top tier source of inspiration for myself ongoing, just by virtue of how brilliant and off-centre he was.

For those that don’t know this reference, it’s from an infamously frustrated outburst by David on the set of Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series, where he loses it a bit regarding the scheduling restrictions of the production, and essentially, the ’suits’ interfering.

It’s a great (short) watch, that makes me smile frequently when thinking about it:

For me, it’s a classic real-life scene played out, where David can lose his cool at the suits, because they’ve finally interfered enough, and the conditions just weren’t right for him, and there’s an overbearing presence frustrating the hell out of him. I just like the rawness of it.

It also resonated most recently on a fairly ironic level, as I’ve been very keen to do more straight-and-narrow journalistic style writing - originally envisioned to all be on GROUPED - but then had this gnawing voice in my head pushing me towards a lot more of the creative writing that I’ll infrequently enjoy doing A LOT. So in my head, I’m a little bit of Lynch, and I’m a little bit of the suits.

I’d been writing incredibly infrequently for a long time now with this publication GROUPED, sometimes with legitimate excuses that I’ve been open about in the past (related to chronic pain setbacks) but often, because I’d lose momentum, or the curation began to get cumbersome, some option paralysis might set in, or just simply, I’m cooked from a very long time of going extremely hard career-wise in the tech/tech-adjacent space I’ve occupied for 12+ years now, and I push against it without acknowledging the shortcomings, or I want to go straight, or I want to gro dreamy. Quite the quandry.

So, because of attempting to jam multiple things into a neat-shaped box of good storytelling meets weirdo eccentricities, it wasn’t quite making sense anymore, to me. And so I’m glad I broke through from the shackles of my own inertia a little bit to understand a bit more where each type of expression and tone may exist. I do journalist style tech writing on SEEDS. I blog and share how its goin’ on GROUPED. And the funniest thing helped me get there:

A fuckin’ company merch newsletter that I write weekly with a friend

DRIP DROP

Recently, I have been co-curating DRIP DROP - a place of worship for good merch - with the legend and co-conspirator Kayla Medica. We’ve definitely been friends for a while, but a while back Kayla and I were spitballing about writing about merch (Kayla published an article about company merch and heaps of people read it), she asked whether I would be interested in writing a newsletter about it, I was, and lo and behold, we’ve just pushed out 23 consecutive weeks of sending out a newsletter about merch designs and we’re not slowing down any time soon.

DRIP DROP has given me ample time and space to get dreamy in 2026, writing absurdly, intentionally recklessly, and with full freedom to just let it rip, and it’s been a godsend in a tougher year mentally due to physical issues that took a very long time to overcome, and has just been a true source of enjoyment to simply just: ‘write.’

Again, proving that to have a creative outlet - especially one that has some accountability attached to it in terms of time-it-ships, really does help in the other facets of your life.

It certainly helped make clear how I want to write, what I want to write about, at what cadence, and where my personal storytelling projects start/end, and where my career ones sit, and I’ll figure that part out soon enough too. Not sure I ever want *just* a full time job ever again, but an itch is most certainly there to get cracking on work in the vein of what I’ve been involved in prior to (launch stuff in market basically)

DRIP DROP goes out every Friday at 2pm AEST (like, today). Sign up here: https://www.drip-drop.studio/

PAST

There has been an inordinate amount of posts this week about the massive NFL game in Melbourne last week, so I’ll resist writing anything hugely in-depth in addition, but I will say: I went, and if you see me in person soon, I have such a great story to tell about the experience.

With SEEDS, I’ll have some writing upcoming related to sports tech, so a profile on NFL including this particular effort will be included. But for me, last week saw a wild week transpire that included being included on a notorious subreddit (not an accomplishment!) and end up at the game thanks to the good grace of AWS, with a few other actual journalists. It’s a crazy story, tell you about it when I see you.

But regarding the game, what an unbelievable spectacle. What more could be said about it other than: as a born and bred Melburnian, it was one of the more unbelievable things to see take over the city, and we have done this many times before as well with other major events. This just happened to be next level.

The paper planes was also a hilarious part of a truly amazing experience. Go sports.

UPCOMING

I don’t overthink events I’ll conjure up - I’m way less focused on ‘how many’ and more focused on ‘whats happening.’

I like chatting and mingling with brand-builders. With writers. With event organisers. With founders in general. And especially if they’re into watching sports with me.

So next week since it’s a public holiday in Melbourne and I’m an NFL fanatic and will be at my favourite pub in Melbourne - The Great Northern Hotel, the best spot to watch sports from - that’s where my new MOAT BUILDERS event begins.

Anyhoo, that’s me, with GROUPED today. I hope you enjoy the writing upcoming, I’m confident you will. I felt a certain responsibility to share since previously, people have sent their email over to read what I produce, so “why not overshare today?” was a part of my thinking today.

Plus, I have some of the sickest merch you’ve ever seen on the way. Like, truly diabolically good, thanks to my new “I-design-merch-now” era, which I am leaning into heavily, as I ask around for a contact at factories as to whether they make custom glute-rollers, and consistently question how I even found myself into this ‘career.’

See you in the inbox, cheers.

Gaz

A Little Curation For Ya

Two David Lynch aligned pieces of music came to mind today: first was Pinky’s Dream by David and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, whose collab on his second album Crazy Clown Time (2011) is a bit of a fav of mine, just a rollicking good time as a song, with this urgent driving beat that has this grimy feel. Her vocals and phrasing are awesome on it.

Then, I would probably go for Xiu Xiu’s amazing album ‘Plays the Music of Twin Peaks.’ where the track ‘Falling’ has been on a favs playlist of mine for years. I love how dramatic everything is with Xiu Xiu, and they are equal parts experimental in everything they do.