My Social Dilemma

Can I talk about social media and what it’s done to us as artists? I’m so incredibly torn on this subject at the moment, but also endlessly fascinated by it as well. For creatives, yelling “look at me, look at me!” into the void is nothing new. However, we’ve now been trained by a few billionaires that if we aren’t constantly yelling “look at me, look at me” into their specific digital scrapbooks, we will cease to exist as artists and possibly even as humans.

I will come clean and admit that I am a daily user. Instagram is my current drug of choice. You may have even only seen this because I shared it on Instagram. I log at least 3-4 hours a day. It’s where I get all my art. All my news. All my Stranger Things fan theories. All my disc golf tutorials. All my sports highlights. And all the AI slop that I never asked for in the first place.

All I have to do is just slightly tilt my head down 18-75 times a day and drink whatever it wants to give me through a firehose until I’m not sure where reality stops and starts.

It’s a love/HATE relationship.

The love part is that I do genuinely want to show people the work I’ve made and putting it on Instagram right after creating it can be a mainline IV drip of immediate gratification and validation. I love the people I’ve connected with there that I may have not connected with otherwise. Artists and photographers that have become friends and colleagues. Bands I’d likely never had heard of. Large swaths of like-minded people reminding me that we are not alone in our fears and hopes for this world.

On one hand, I believe social media is currently helping to accelerate a cultural consciousness awakening that would have taken so much longer had we only the slow drip of mainstream media to dole out truth. Yet, on the other hand, it’s keeping us sedated and paralyzed with too much information. We keep hoping that justice will be found if we keep scrolling long enough. On any given morning I’ve taken in more information by 9 am than most of my anscestors would have absorbed in a lifetime.

As an artist, my best ideas have never come from seeing a post by another artist and being inspired by it, even though that does happen every day. My best ideas have come in the spaces where I allow my mind to just do what it was intended to do - think. Dream. Imagine. Rattle around until something suddenty pops out of thin air. And I know if I don’t give myself that time, it will not come.

Just as with scrolling and being overhelmed by news, social media leaves me overwhelmed by the art I consume. So many great photographers, videographers, painters, and collagers of all kind fill my feed and my brain with more ideas than I could ever know what to do with; leaving very little room for anything of my own creation to slip in.

So, what do we do with all this? Moderation would be a good start, but there hasn’t been many days where I haven’t blown past my own self-imposed hour and a half time limit. Just as with drinking, some people can have just a few, but I wasn’t “some people” then and probably aren’t “some people” now. Do we just jump on another app that’s not run by a billionaire goon? Would that solve the problem or only temporarily releive it?

How can we bring the online community and inspiration out of our stupid little phones and experience them again in real life?

I propose a monthly art class where artists gather together somewhere in person and maybe randomly draw an assignment or word or whatever out of a hat. We could discuss what that word or assignment might mean, and then next month we meet again and show each other the work we’ve made, listen to records, talk about the world— connect.

Maybe not THIS exactly, but something like THIS could help slow us down and connect just enough to start unwinding ourselves from these digital handcuffs. This is what artists used to do. Operate in secret, creating an underground society that could not be affected or penetrated by corporate interests. And I don’t know about you, but when I create something now, I post it almost immediately without even thinking.

Give me that dopamine hit of 32 likes. LOOK AT ME!

I’m tired of screaming that into Mark Zuckerberg’s ear every day. What the fuck does he know about art?

Let’s figure out how to connect and create slower, with more intention.

In Real Life.

I’m open and ready for it. And maybe that’s enough for the moment.

2016: a reminder

Note: This was a post I made on a wordpress site ten years ago, after life brought us to our knees.

From the hard, plastic, hospital chair in the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, I reached up to hold Emily’s hand as she remained tethered to tubes of one kind or another. It was the middle of the night and the certainty of our future together was suddenly anything but certain. I was terrified. All I could control was that moment. And the best I could do in that moment was to hold her hand and tell her that I loved her.

Two days earlier, Emily went to the doctor for a phantom pain in her side that had been coming and going for the past 6 months. After being shuffled from one office to another, the only thing they could tell her was that she was going to need surgery … immediately.

3 hours in, the first doctor came out to let us know everything was fine. It was just her appendix and all would be well. My mother-in-law and I embraced and cried tears of joy. 2 hours later, the doc came back out, but this time he wasn’t alone.

“Bad cells” had been found in the original section and a specialist was called in to remove 1/3 of her colon to see if cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.

But wait, everything was just fine.

And now … Cancer?

Cancer.

The tears came again, but this time they were saturated with fear. I walked away from the waiting room to gather myself and took a detour into the hospital bathroom to have a break down. The kind of break down that only comes when you need to jump the line of everyone you know and take it straight to God. So I prayed. And cried. And then prayed some more.

Suddenly my job, my career, my podcast, my twitter, my facebook page, my instagram and a million other things that I had given SO MUCH OF MY TIME to over the past 2-5 years had zero relevance. Sure, I guess I had been a present and loving husband and father, but those weren’t things I necessarily worked on. They were always there. They were givens.

Em and I have been together since before Y2K, before cell phones and before I stopped requiring the need for hair products. I felt justified giving my attention to other things because our family was so solid. It was all these other trivial pursuits that needed my full attention. I had to work the hardest at them if I was ever going to turn them into … well, I wasn’t exactly sure what the point was in that moment.

So, I asked for strength. I asked for her healing. And like a child, I tried to barter with God.

If you just do this, I promise I’ll do this … and so on.

Over the next few days, we were surrounded with love and support. Cards, flowers, food, prayers, kindness and even money came rushing in from our family, friends, church and even people we barely knew. We were wrapped in love. Any time we started to feel consumed by the fear, the love poured in. Our cup was running over. I knew no matter what the pathology report said, we would not be facing anything alone.

My prayers started to change from asking God what he could do for me to asking God what I could do for him.

How had I been so selfish for so long? Where was I when anyone else I knew was going through a similar struggle? I let facebook messages saying I’d pray for someone replace actually trying to ease their burden with actions. I let my uncertainty for knowing exactly the right thing to do or say become an excuse for doing absolutely nothing.

The Wednesday of the following week, Emily got a call from her surgeon.

There was cancer.

As you might imagine, she didn’t hear much of what was said after that. We gathered the family together, called in medical favors and tried to get our strength up to deal with whatever was about to come our way. 4 hours later, I got the surgeon on the phone myself and he told me that yes, there was cancer, but … they were optimistic that it was gone. Hopefully cured, he even said. Relief washed over us. We pulled each other close as the tears of joy found their way back to the sides of our cheeks. Another week later and the test results would tell us that the cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes. Even better, it was determined that she would not require treatment. Only observation.

In the span of two weeks, Emily rode the roller coaster of dealing with a phantom stomach pain to beating cancer.

Yeah, that’s right. Cancer, you got beat. Put this one in your loss column. Hang your head and get back on the bus.

I know Em would be embarrassed for me to say that she’s beaten cancer. She would in no way want to diminish anyone else’s much longer and more difficult battle by claiming to have overcome a disease she didn’t even know she had. In her eyes, she just got sick and had surgery.  But I promise she’s done so much more than that. She’s been unbelievably strong. Both physically and mentally. She’s battled through this with less complaints than I battle through a common head cold. From the first time she pulled herself up out of the hospital bed to the day she stepped back on the treadmill, her will to get better has amazed me.

I’m writing all this down for two reasons. One, because I think we’re supposed to share good news with each other. Both literally and spiritually speaking. And two, because I have to hold myself accountable.

If I didn’t, it would be very easy to slip back into old habits once everything was back to normal.

The thing is, I don’t want to things to go back to normal. I want to live in this new normal–the one where I don’t take a day of this amazing life for granted. The one where I put my work into becoming a better husband and father. The one where I don’t ignore God’s daily calling to try and lighten someone else’s load. The one where we take all the love we’ve been given and spend the rest of our lives trying to pay it forward.

I hate that Emily had to go through a second of this, but I won’t let it go in vain. When I lax (which I definitely will), I will keep coming back to the person I wanted to be in that moment where I thought I was losing everything. Its the least I can do.

May you be so lucky as to have your life shaken to its core, yet left completely in tact.

I know it’s changed ours forever.

Beginning again, again

How many journals in my possession only have the first few pages filled out before a sea of blanks? How many sketch books with promising starts that pittered out before page 20? How many Men’s Health fitness plans that I swore I’d stick to? How many meditation and mindfulness practices? Duolingo streaks? All broken. How do I keep blowing the oop on my own well-intentioned alley?

I can’t answer that. But I can say that the journal I started was on June 3, 2023. It was the 30th anniversary of the very first day I started feeling the need to write down what was happening in my life. Seemed like the perfect time to reclaim my love for writing. I was on a once-in-a-lifetime trip with my family to Portugal. It was my daughter’s 11th birthday. Inspiration was abundant. Two and a half years later, that journal has three entries in it.

As often happens, the disappointment of not following through on a goal I had set out for myself caused me to stop doing the thing altogether. This happens literally every January when I confidently proclaim a dedication to 5 am yoga (I did not proclaim that this year, which feels like progress).

If I dig down to the core, I think the reason I abandon ship is simply because it doesn’t go the way I expected. The way I envisioned. And so instead of continuing to do the thing that would better my health and happiness, I punish myself for not doing it perfectly? What kind of sense does that make?

2026, here we go. Beginning again … again. This time, I’m trying it with no expectations. No deadlines. No goal posts. No broad declarations. Let’s just try to be persistent, give ourselves some grace and search for something real.

I don’t know how these writings will become a part of my creative process again, but I just can’t keep a written journal any more. My penmanship has gone to hell. This will likely be a combination of My So Called Life-esque cringe journals and reflections on the work created in the next year.

It’s another attempt at proof of existence. I once existed on this planet. Here’s how things looked to me. Here’s what I thought of them. That’s all art is, really—an innate need to leave a mark. To say thank you to the creator of existence for letting us be a part of it. To let the people you love know that even when you’re gone, they can look at this image or word or paint mark that came from you and know you are still with them.

For me, it’s a pretty small group of people who would find this useful, but those people mean everything to me. Emily, Campbell, Lyla, all this is for you. Forever.

Ok ,now. Let’s begin.