I deleted my entire Twitter account sometime in early 2023.
I deleted Instagram from my phone on December 31, 2023.
And then Facebook.
I’ve spent the better part of my life on these platforms, both personally and professionally, with the latter involving, at one time, the amassing of 9 million followers on a Facebook company page where I deployed nauseating marketing jargon to get “users” daily. At the time, it was a complete thrill. But incrementally, I didn’t understand why the hell I was doing what I was doing.
The hard pill to swallow truth is that I have been anxious about saying goodbye to social media because I grew up experiencing it the way previous generations experienced any other communal novelty. We all have. But my great awakening earlier last year snapped some long-gone awareness back into how I was feeling about where I spent time. While burrowing into the coziness of endless reels and scrolls, there was always a hangover. At times, the effects were far worse than the way a third (ok fourth) Negroni would leave me the morning after an outing.
But there have been other bludgeoning thoughts, things that feel sort of silly. Will I cut myself off from the larger cultural zeitgeist? How will I know what my friends are doing, especially those far away? How will people see the agony of my work? How do I follow artists I discovered on social media? Will I lose touch with them and the society around me? Most importantly, how will I ever learn to properly cook a steak?
Over the last year, my habits with media at large grew into a very unhealthy relationship between my expectations and my paranoia of time being lost. How many times did I sit “studying” countless reels of people inserting film into a film back or walking along the Seine capturing vignettes of lovers, enemies, or the desolate? Many times, friends. Like hundreds of hours worth. And most of the time I felt an excruciating emptiness about things I was seeing, but not things I was doing, like overlooking a cityscape from a lofty apartment only to think about what all of those people milling about were feeling down there. Observing for too long can make us forget that we are also meant to be “milling about.”
It’s a hard thing to put a price on the time we spend on these platforms, how they inform us for better and worse, and what areas of growth we’re depleting. Like eating duck fat roasted potatoes in your 50s and washing it down with a second Old Fashioned: feels good in the moment but we may have stripped a few years off of our lives. I guess it’s fine if you love duck fat. But it’s a personal trade-off we’re all conflicted to make.
The optimist in me says I gradually ingested really good inspiration from these activities, influencing my creativity in ways the weather outside may dictate a fashion choice. I discovered studios, young artists of color, musicians in small towns, and people in midlife, like me, exploring that nagging creative bug. But as I wrote in my previous newsletter, a deep sense that things weren’t being reciprocated began to creep in. I was simply giving too much to these platforms and not receiving enough back.
I’ve never been at ease creating content for social consumption. I always feel guilty about sharing my kid’s photos or humblebragging whatever experience I was having. I still did it. And I grew entranced by everyone else’s experiences, too. For all I know, that’s the underwhelming barebones of it all: we share shit, we see shit, and we simply move on.
The funny thing is, I’m hardly the only one. Other people, much more pronounced on these platforms than I ever was, have started their migrations from social media and back to long-form platforms. If there’s a trend I think we will likely see unfurl this year is that we’ll get back to even more slowing down. We’ll drink wine a bit more slowly. We’ll eat slower. We’ll watch movies again without our phones. We’ll take a walk around a lake and watch duck butts for 20 minutes. Maybe not everyone, but a collective sentiment of less-is-more digital time along with more-substance-less-often-making seems to be a certain middle-aged decision. And I’m here for it.
”Let it rip”
I might be the only one late to “The Bear” but it might be one of the most beautiful dramas on television.
The story of a world-class chef and brother moving back home to manage his deceased brother’s restaurant, all while managing the obliteration of grief and PTSD on his psyche, the heights of perfectionism, the management of other human’s emotions, all dealing with a cousin who’s love is as devout as his commitment to being an asshole. The drama throws you face-first into the grips of family love, overzealous drive, crippling grief, and all I can think about is eating one of Marcus’ cakes every episodes
But, wow, do I love it’s unhinged focus on passion and all the darkness and light inside of us that drives that passion. The things we love to do because we love to do them.
Metaphor pun alert, but the show’s ability to bring so many different characters, their flaws, their grievances, and their humanity and create a reduction (see, pun) that leaves us with a sophisticated and complex view on passion: chef’s kiss every episode.
Based on this newsletter, you know I’m trying to extract whatever creative drive I have. And, yes, I’ll be the first to attest there’s some midlife shit happening. But that’s probably why you’re reading this newsletter, too!
One scene specifically focused on Syd, Carmy’s partner, and her obsessive drive to get a Michelin star. At one point Carmy asks pointedly and quizzically, “Do you really want a fucking [Michelin] star?” To which Syd responds, “Yes. I really do.” And then Carmy, already a prestigious Michelin star-rated chef, tells her the truth, “Then you have to give it everything you have. All of it.”
Bite my fist it’s so darn beautiful.
As season one culminated, Carmy finally got a bit of closure after discovering a goodbye note from his brother. An index card with the phrase “Let it rip”. A reminder his brother would give him when shit got tough with obstacles and doubt crept in. “Let it rip” the way when you’re down to your last strike and you just have to bank on your talent, your grit, and the fact that you want something bad enough that you’ll leave everything out there to make it happen.
I’ve kept thinking about this sentiment because it’s the journey I find myself in, chasing dreams, immersing myself in the almost debilitating exercise of collecting visuals I encounter and turning them into art, story, footprint, or identity. But at the end of the day, what choice is there? I just need to let it rip.
I’ve got a target
When I set out to be a writer in 2005, I threw myself into the gauntlet of New York City's creative underclass, sharing a desk a few times a week with Nick Denton of Gawker (happenstance) and scraping my knuckles in that media slave economy we called “pro blogging.” It’s odd to think that a few of my sports, tech, and culture bylines no longer exist because most of those websites all went under, swept away in the great tsunami of media death in the late 2010s. Yet, I think about that time with tepid enthusiasm because I was always unapologetic about what I wanted to become, and I think we lose a bit of that force the older we get. The good news: there’s always time to keep reinventing, pushing, and moving toward something you want to do.
One of the things I’ll be trying this year is to sell more work, try to get some photography clients, and maybe even get published somewhere again (small time, ya’ll). You can help by simply sharing this newsletter with people you think will find it interesting or upgrade to a paid subscription. If you do, I’ll be giving away some prints to paid subscribers once a month, with details to come. But this newsletter is free first, always, and that will never change.
As a paid subscriber, you can also ask me to print anything you’ve seen on these posts. I’m not famous, ya’ll, so my prints are cheap!
Targets. Goalposts. Fences. I’m not keen on getting too hyped on resolutions but sustaining the wave of creative agony is something I’m excited to keep doing. And I truly appreciate all of the reading you’ve done with me in the last year.
One more thing…
Filling your house with friendship and laughter might be one of those things we don’t do enough of. We had friends come over for New Year’s Eve and it’s during these moments that home feels like home. Remember anticipatory nostalgia? It’s like we built a racetrack of anticipatory nostalgia last weekend, and it was glorious.
Happy New Year and thanks for sharing your Sunday morning with me. Let it rip.
You convinced me to give The Bear another go.
When Flickr first came out, I was thrilled to have a global community where I could share my photography and learn from others. It was a time-consuming, curated process divorced from advertising and (for the most part) self promotion. It was a community of creative people in visual conversation. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t incredibly talented people compelled by creativity on IG and TikTok, but I struggle to find them and pay attention between so much noise.
The worst part of the social media dark age was how it deadened my senses and cheapened my interactions: scrolling instead of observing, two-second emojis instead of considered comments that might take 10 minutes to draft.
Every cultural movement (beats, hippies, Black Panthers, cholos, disco, grunge) ends in excess while the counter-culture starts to take over. I’m sure that social media will continue forever in some form, but I also sense a counter-culture, slower and more deliberate, beginning to challenge it. I love it. And I love that B&W photo of the seagulls and kids with Rainier softly in the background.