Hi.

….

This is awkward. Well, I am awkward, so maybe I’m translating myself well. Excluding the short write-up I gave with my last short, it’s probably been close to a year since I’ve written for the sake of itself. 

I always liked writing as an isolated thing, as I never felt my style translated especially well into video content. Alas, making it work with written content in excess of 280 characters can be challenging for anyone, especially when you’re a teenager trying to find their voice and desperate for any audience whatsoever. The main reason I seriously devoted myself to YouTube was because I saw no way to break through with blog posts, which is especially ironic considering video editing became my job for several years after. I did end up discovering the fun in video creation, but I always find some catharsis in returning to this kind of writing. 

Now, the idea that probably less than a dozen people will read this front to back is strangely appealing. I’m writing this in a coffee shop while lightly eavesdropping on passing conversations, and I think that feeling of small, disconnected, yet intimate spaces is something that used to be a more common online (though over-romanticized as anything past will be.)

I’ve slowly felt a growing need for this kind of space, something temporal but not so ephemeral as a certain avian app – especially a desire to create the exact opposite of what has become ever more the forefront of it. Somewhere with nuance, somewhere that might possibly be the ever slightest amount thoughtful, somewhere a bit less like a soup. No one wants the scum to rise to the top. 

Is it a bit silly to wax philosophical about my relationship to Twitter? Sure, and yet I’ve probably spent more of my reading time there than anywhere else in the last year. It’s incredibly addictive, hugely popular, and occasionally good. I danced with some of the alternatives, but ultimately they will all have variations of the same core issues. It’s the nature of the beast. 

I swore off internet arguments with strangers in their entirety years ago. It never goes anywhere productive, no one changes their mind, and it wastes everyone’s time. Now, though, as more posts get pushed my way that appeal to me about as much as the Minions movie, I notice myself getting occasionally swept into a whirlpool of misery. I’ll see something I explicitly disagree with, and before I know it I’m scanning through every reply, looking for even more miserable people and coyly liking replies from the few who still have enough energy to attempt to correct them. I don’t know how the knowledge that there are more hateful, stupid people than I first assumed is remotely appealing (it isn’t), but it is strangely hypnotic. I wonder if it comes from a primal desire to know any potential threat, even on such a minor scale as this, or if it’s more the fear that your opinion might not align with the majority and you might possibly have to rethink your own point of view. Likely (obviously) a mix of things. 

So in order to encourage myself to engage more with ideas and less with idiocracy I’m going to make an effort to post here with some measure of frequency. Make it a journal of sorts. I rarely post much of substance or personal vulnerability on twitter, and self-consciousness aside I do find it hard to find a way to frame my thoughts and experiences in a meaningful way when constrained the limits and energy of the platform.  

Not that I’ll quit anytime soon. At least it’s a better habit than cigarettes. The only cancer I can get there is steeped in hyperbolic metaphor.

You can follow the blog to be notified when I post, but I will try to consistently post here on Fridays so there’s an easy to remember day to check. Even if I don’t have anything written I’ll try to share something like some art or WIP material from projects I’m working on.