TheJournal
Where code meets consciousness. Deep dives into the systems that shape us—from neural networks to nervous systems.
Psychology. AI collaboration. Human connection. Real stories, real insights—explained so anyone can understand.
Written by
James G. — Developer & Writer
Deep dives into your digital footprint—psychology, forensics, and intentional living.
PART 1 • FORENSICS
The Silent Witness
Your computer's been journaling your every move. Windows Shellbags track every folder you've opened—learn what they reveal.
PART 0 • WELLNESS
The Digital Purge
Nervous system hygiene for the algorithmically overwhelmed. Unfollowed 3,600 people—here's the psychology and protocol.
01 Shellbags → 02 Prefetch → 03 LNK Files → 04 Browser → 05 USB
The Empathy Series
A 5-part journey from neuroscience to practical application. Read in order for the full experience.
Learning Tools Series
Comprehensive guides for building React, Tailwind, and TypeScript projects with AI assistance. Each article has a companion interactive lab.
🪜 Vercel × Cursor Ladder
⚡ Skill Boosters
The Science of Reading People: Empathy vs. Projection
A deep dive into the neuroscience and psychology that separates true perspective-taking from emotional projection—and why the difference matters for your relationships, leadership, and self-awareness.
From Empath to Skilled Empath: A Practical Training Guide
The hands-on sequel: daily practices, reflection prompts, and concrete exercises to train perspective-taking, reduce projection, and build the neural infrastructure for genuine empathy.
Empathy Without Burnout: How to Care Deeply Without Falling Apart
For people who feel everything: practical boundaries, nervous system tools, and recovery rituals to stay kind and connected without drowning in everyone else's emotions.
Empathy in Conflict: How to Stay Connected When You Disagree
The capstone: Apply everything you've learned about empathy, projection, and nervous system regulation in the moment that matters most—when disagreement threatens connection.
Leading with Empathy (Without Becoming Everyone's Therapist)
The capstone: Scale empathy across your team or athletes while protecting your role, boundaries, and energy. Build cultures where empathy doesn't depend entirely on you.
Problem-Solving & Community: Ship Real Work
Problem-Solving & Community: Ship Real Work Part 3 of 3 in the Cursor Mastery series > 🧪 Interactive Lab Available: [Cursor as a Character Lab ...
Workflow Mastery: Automate, Accelerate, Personalize
Workflow Mastery: Automate, Accelerate, Personalize Part 2 of 3 in the Cursor Mastery series > 🧪 Interactive Lab Available: [Prompting for Deve...
Cursor Mindset: Onboarding the Creative Coder
Cursor Mindset: Onboarding the Creative Coder Part 1 of 3 in the Cursor Mastery series > 🧪 Interactive Lab Available: [Cursor IDE Basics Lab →]...
The ADHD Loop Engine, Part 1: The Loop Machine
ADHD isn't an attention deficit—it's an attention loop engine. Understanding WHY your brain loops is the first step to working with it instead of against it.
The ADHD Loop Engine, Part 2: Rocket Loops & Gravity Loops
Mapping every loop type—the creative hyperfocus that makes you extraordinary and the emotional spirals that make you exhausted. Same hardware, opposite outcomes.
The ADHD Loop Engine, Part 3: The Loop Kit
Tools, scripts, and experiments for working WITH your brain. Recognition protocols, exit strategies, and the 14-day experiment to build your personalized manual.
From Zero to Your First Live Website: A Cursor + Vercel Adventure for Complete Beginners
You don't need to be a developer to ship something real. With Cursor as your AI coding partner and Vercel as your magic deploy button, you'll have a live website before dinner. This is the hand-holding guide nobody else will write.
Debug Like a Pro: The Art of Finding What's Broken
Every developer encounters bugs. The difference between frustration and flow is knowing how to find them. Here's the systematic approach that turns mystery errors into quick fixes.
Engineering the Impossible: How Magnetic Levitation Actually Works
From theory to trains: magnetic fields, superconductors, feedback systems, and the brutal engineering challenges of scaling levitation from toys to transportation.
Tailwind CSS Mastery: The Visual Language of Modern Websites
Learn utility-first CSS the practical way. From confused to confident—responsive design, colors, spacing, and animations without writing a single CSS file.
TypeScript Confidence: The Safety Net You Didn't Know You Needed
Stop debugging mystery errors. TypeScript catches mistakes before you run your code—like spell-check for programming. Here's how to use it without the overwhelm.
The Calm Before Code: Setting Up Your First AI-Powered Project
Before you write a single line of code, there's a ritual that separates chaotic builds from calm ones. This is the beginner-friendly guide to folders, commands, and AI prompts that actually work.
The Ops Mindset: Systems That Run Themselves
Automation scripts, rollback drills, AI governance, and the operational rituals that turn chaotic projects into calm systems. The expert playbook for AI-assisted development.
Ship It With Confidence: Building Features That Don't Break
The step-by-step workflow for building real features with AI assistance—from discovery to deployment, with tests and documentation that actually help.
Why We Dream of Levitation: The Physics That Makes Gravity Irrelevant
Explore the science behind humanity's ancient dream of defying gravity—from Newton's laws to maglev trains to the physics we don't yet control. A beginner-friendly deep dive into levitation, magnetic fields, and what it takes to escape Earth's pull.
The Guilty Boundary Experiment
What happened when I set boundaries without explaining, apologizing, or softening—a 30-day experiment that revealed my guilt was entirely self-imposed.
Why Your Gut Feeling Has a Blind Spot
The day I trusted my intuition and was completely wrong—unpacking emotional false positives, when your nervous system lies, and how to debug your gut's algorithm.
How to Actually Work With AI: The Collaboration Framework (Part 1)
Most people use AI like a search engine. Here's what happens when you treat it like a collaborator—the workflow that lets us ship 40,000 words of content in a single session.
How to Actually Work With AI: Advanced Patterns (Part 2)
The masterclass—specific prompting patterns, developing AI taste, session management for long projects, and the meta-skill of learning to learn with AI.
The Maintenance Work No One Sees
Emotional project management, invisible labor, and why 'just asking' isn't simple—the hidden work of tracking everyone's needs and why it exhausts you before anyone notices.
The Performative Confidence Gap
Why the people who look most confident often feel the least secure—and how performing certainty prevents us from building the real thing.
Reading the Room vs. Reading the Silence
The invisible curriculum of social threat detection—how hypervigilance to rejection cues becomes chronic monitoring, why you can't turn it off, and how to recalibrate when survival skills outlive their usefulness.
The Cost of Being Low-Maintenance
Why the easiest person in the room often pays the highest price—examining the reinforcement schedules that reward self-suppression and turn accommodation into self-abandonment.
The Translator Tax
The invisible labor of being the person who explains, bridges, and interprets between people—and why emotional translation is skilled work that rarely gets credited.
When 'Fine' Isn't Fine
The vocabulary of emotional minimization—how we learned to shrink our feelings into acceptable words, and what it costs us to keep doing it.
Building Interactive Cybersecurity Labs with React & Framer Motion
How I built fully interactive Red/Blue/Purple Team security labs with real-time visualizations, network topology diagrams, and packet capture simulations using React, TypeScript, and Framer Motion.
TypeScript Patterns That Actually Make Code Better
TypeScript is more than just 'JavaScript with types.' Learn patterns with 3 levels of explanation: Like You're 3, Like You're My Boss, Like You're My Girlfriend. Discriminated Unions, Branded Types, Const Assertions, and more!
React Performance: From 2.5s to 180ms Load Time
Real-world optimization techniques that reduced my portfolio's load time by 93%. Code splitting, lazy loading, image optimization, and more.
Mobile Performance: From 3.1s to 1.5s Load Time (Lighthouse 98/100)
Complete mobile performance optimization journey with real metrics. CSS optimization, font self-hosting, code splitting, and analytics deferral that doubled performance.
TypeScript Patterns That Actually Make Code Better
Beyond basic types - discriminated unions, branded types, and advanced patterns that prevent bugs before they happen. Real examples from production code.
Google OAuth Production: The PKCE Puzzle Nobody Tells You About
Why your OAuth works locally but returns 400 Bad Request in production. The PKCE configuration gotcha that costs hours of debugging.
Debugging OAuth in Production: When Google Authentication Mysteriously Fails
OAuth worked perfectly locally but failed silently in production. Here's the debugging journey that uncovered a cascade of configuration issues.
React Bundling Nightmare: How Terser Nearly Killed My Production App
'Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ReactCurrentDispatcher)' - The production mystery where aggressive minification corrupted React's internals. Here's how to fix it.
Building a Real-Time Notification System with Supabase in 2 Hours
From database triggers to React UI with real-time subscriptions. Complete implementation of likes, comments, and notification bell with unread badges.
Merry Christmas & A Look Ahead: All Systems Go
Showing 40 articles
More articles coming soon. Follow the journey on GitHub