Hitting the Reset Button

This year was my first post-grad. Despite a growing apathy for art made by humans, I entered this year feeling hopeful, motivated, and ready to flex my creative muscles. I expected to land a good job, build a consistent creative schedule, and make connections. I was ready to begin pouring the foundations for my ideal future life as a working writer and illustrator.

None of that actually happened.

Instead the year was a wincing, limping one. The longer it took to make a stride, the less I felt inclined to do it, the less motivated, less excited, and all the more guilty over the time wasted waiting for inspiration. It’s a condition I like to call paralysis by paralysis. It’s characterized by feeling like you don’t know what to do, which makes you feel incapable of doing anything. And then what do you do?

Alongside that, there was the problem I have with social media. I’m like a lot of people my age in this; I use it too often and too much. I wallow in it like a pig in mud, or a, well, me. In self-pity. It distracted me and then it absorbed me. It took my attention away from the creative outlets I loved so dearly, and before I knew it, it had been months since I’d painted, drawn, or written anything. And it made me crazy. Not crazy, really, but like a tiger in a cage, I get edgy, I start pacing. It was a betrayal of my nature, purely out of desire for distraction.

What’s the solution? Well, here I almost turned to social media again. I’ve had an Instagram for my work since I was in 10th grade, and I’ve posted maybe twenty times every year since then and changed the username about as many times. While there were moments where having a posting schedule motivated me, it also forced me to churn out bland work simply for the sake of a post. And social media is a deliciously crisp poison apple.

So here’s where I’ve landed. Having no creative outlet makes me dysfunctional, so I go on social media to look at people being creative and feel guilty that I’m not. Therefore, spending too much time on social media also makes me completely dysfunctional. My brain leaks out of my ears, literally. (Figuratively.)

What I’ve decided to to do about it is this. This blog, this website, I mean. For two reasons, really.

First, it’s just simply not social media. Maybe a blog would’ve once been considered so, but now it feels scaled back so far from what we’re dealing with today. I don’t hit “post” compulsively once I have figured out just the right song pairing to go with my photo dump. It doesn’t ignite in me the same need for the right kind of perception that social media does. I don’t need to look cool or funny or interesting here. I don’t need to look like anything at all. I’m just here to share what I’ve got.

Secondly, because of you. If you’re here reading this in June of 2025, you probably actually know me. By being here in front of you, I have to hold myself accountable, take myself seriously, and do the work I want to do, because frankly, if I put it all out there and then bail, and someone like you asks me about it, I’ll be pretty embarrassed to admit it. (Two Petal’s Razor: never resort to personal discipline when embarrassment will suffice.) (I’m joking.)

(Kinda.)

It doesn’t mean I will never post on Instagram again—that’s still probably the best place for people to find my art. It’s just that I also need to be able to write, to think the whole process through, and talk about writing and art in meaningful way, one that can’t be contained in an Instagram caption. And perhaps I will save a few of you by yanking you out of the doomscroll and forcing you to read something, and when we die we will all go to Luddite heaven together. Probably not that last part, but you see what I’m saying. We can all make it out of the algorithm alive.

This little project is a start, at least. Next step, let’s all get dumbphones and take pictures on film, shall we?

Thanks for reading. Now get off your phone and go take a hike. (Literally.)

Photo of Staircase Rapids in Olympic National Park. Taken May 24, 2025 by yours truly with Kodak Gold. I wasn’t kidding about shooting film.