Category: LifeCategory: Life

The biggest thing about getting away from social media and staring at our phone is remembering that things weren’t always like this.

The iPhone was launched in 2007, not even a decade ago, and we’re exhausted.

This new behavior came about by major companies (the unholy trinity) spending billions of dollars to instill the belief that we must be connected with everyone at all times.

“I need more subscribers” season is over.

Maybe now it’s Embrace What Exists season. Or Time to Celebrate Who’s Here.

The season of “more subscribers” will come around again, for sure. But today—right now—there are wonderful people already in our life and creative orbit. Maybe this can be a season (or even just a week) of honoring what already exists.

Perhaps this is a time of undoing, ridding ourselves of complex processes and systems.

This from Yancey Strickler:

“THE LONG GAME IS ABOUT CONFIDENCE. YOU HAVE TO WILLINGLY LIVE IN A TRUTH THAT’S NOT CERTAIN, YET OPERATE WITH THE FAITH THAT IT WILL BE. A CONSTANT PRESSURE YOU MUST BEFRIEND/TOLERATE.”

Having the confidence that I don’t need to back up every single post, file, or image from the last 20+ years. Confidence is cancelling Adobe and just figuring it out. Confidence is deleting social media profiles and having the faith that it will be okay (it will).

I have no confidence that the Unholy Trinity, that a new app, gadget, or system will come along and give us the answer. Their interest is self-interest, and they’ll continue to string us along if we let them.

Instead, my confidence is with fellow creative folk, even if the directions are a little messy and the path looks weird.

Love this from Florencia Ornelas:

“I gave myself the task to sketch as many strangers as possible during my commute to work instead of scrolling and it was a great exercise to get my creative brain working and have something to look forward every day before working 9-10 hours on my laptop.”

If we wait until we’re a full time artist, we might be waiting a long time. Better to start right where we’re at, with what we’ve got, with the time that is available.

We don’t become great in 10 minutes, but we can get a little better 10 minutes at a time.

From “Gen Z’s College Radio Revival:”

“I’m 21. I grew up in the age of algorithms. The way music is right now scares me because of the rise of AI. Not even AI made music (I hate it) but even just ‘Daily Mix, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5.’ It’s not made by someone. It’s made by an algorithm. I wish more of that stuff was person curated.”—Mari McLaughlin, WHRW (Binghamton)

“What attracts a lot of people to college radio is the idea of putting somebody on. Showing them a new song they haven’t seen before, outside of the algorithmic nature of streaming.”—Aidan Greenwell, WRFL (Kentucky)

I wrote “A Blackened Death Metal Band Has A College Radio Breakthrough” back in 2023:

“My understanding is, so the college radio stations started playing us and then one of these kids have like, graduated college and then started their own web radio stations. And so then they’re playing us on those, and then other people hear about it, and they’re playing us on their stations. And then some like real legitimate, like the one local radio station here, the Big Rock one has played us multiple times on it, which makes no sense to me.”

College radio will endure because the experience of music is youthful, it is life. I believe this because I see kids in Nirvana shirts, or hear them jamming Pearl Jam covers. Youthful zest isn’t flowing into Spotify, or other streaming music services, it’s a dead scene driving only by increasing profits for shareholders, and absolute race to the bottom. Meanwhile, “the kids” are still picking up guitars, playing with loop stations, setting up house shows.

Streaming music companies don’t stand a chance.