GOING FIRST IS A RISK

People want proof because they don’t want risk.

When I dare suggest that maybe we can exist without social media, or musicians can take their music off streaming platforms, I basically hear this: “give me 25 examples of people doing it that are successful.”

As in, prove that other people have done it and maybe I’ll entertain the idea.

And really, eh, I’m not trying to convince anyone. If you wanna use something, use it. I ain’t your dad.

But if using a particular product or service pains you, if it’s triggering, it’s harmful to your mental health, or your sobriety, ummm… yeah, I think it’s okay to entertain the idea of not using that particular product.

If you’re a recovering addict, it’s okay if you don’t wanna play in bars.

Hell, if you just hate the bar scene, I’d say it’s okay to not play in bars.

Going first, without evidence, is hard. Which is maybe why so few do it.

SEASONS

We’re definitely in between seasons here in PA. Yesterday it was 75F, then on my morning walk it’s in the low 40s. I don’t know if it’s just getting older, or being more in tune with my feelings, but it’s taken me for a ride this year.

I haven’t written as much. I eased up on booking so many Zoom call interviews. Sent less newsletters.

Trying to put my energy into the bigger things (like a Zoom class I hosted this week where we built HTML pages from plain text files and uploaded them to a web host), and then conserve energy in other places, like this constant nag of publishing.

Seth Godin publishes everyday. Gary Vee posts 900 times a day. It’s like you have to pick one or other, and days off aren’t encouraged.

A friend said they feel like they have to have a monthly offering or else they’ll go broke.

It doesn’t help that gas is nearing $4/gallon here. Or that just 50 years ago people could work regular jobs and buy a house, and now lawyers and people with degrees and “grown up” jobs can’t seem to make it work.

This is America.

IT HAPPENS WHEN IT HAPPENS

I haven’t been running as much.
I haven’t been making music as much.
I haven’t been writing here as much.
I haven’t been walking as much.

We are humans, living through seasons, under the weight of the ambient doom that most of us have been feeling for years.

But today I got out for a run.
Today I streamed my music for about an hour.
Today I wrote this post.

DNS SETTINGS ARE NOT A VIBE

Vibe coding is fun and all (here’s my new Hunterthen site), but the behind the scenes work is not.

Updating DNS settings, SSL certificates, troubleshooting your router to not block FTP traffic? SHEESH.

Social media won because it was easy; upload a photo, write a quick bio, and you can upload a video all within 10 minutes.

But if we can’t set up a website in less that 15 minutes then it’s just not worth it.

It’s not that it’s hard, it just takes a bit to figure stuff out. We can do hard things!

I’ve been fiddling around with DNS stuff since the mid 2000s and I’m glad I have Claude to ask about my CNAME settings to properly authenticate my SSL cert.

Then again, this is why everyone doesn’t write a book either. It takes time and patience. Plenty of hurdles.

Either you want to do the thing, and will do whatever it takes, or you won’t.

WHO ARE YOU?

It amazes me how many times I see people’s websites with a BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL button, and not a single photo or video or snippet of audio.

Some are even paid. Pay $150 or $200 or $500 to hop on a Zoom call.

You want me to jump onto a call with a complete stranger?
After just reading some text and nice graphics?
In 2026, in the age if AI, show your humanity?!?

Give me evidence that you’re a sane, rational person who knows how to hold a conversation. Prove you’re not a total creep.

Here’s my “book a 1:1 call with me” page, the one that you have to pay for. With video.

Otherwise, here’s my free 15 minute offer. No video, but hey, if you make it to this page; you probably already know who I am.

I’m not saying you need a 4K camera and a $500 microphone – but building trust is an exchange.

MAKING MORE MUSIC

Communal Sound Choir

I met Nikki Lerner back in 2019, from Seth Godin’s Freelancer’s Workshops. We’ve been talking almost every Monday on Zoom ever since.

We originally connected over work. She had just left an office job to strike out on her own, I was trying to make my “helping busy music publicists with their digital dirty work” thing work better.

We used to over think the tiny bits, now we seek alignment in our work.

Last summer Nikki (a life long musician) wanted to work more in music, and wasn’t sure how it’d pay any bills, but just knew she had to do it.

So she formed a choir, and that led to a job offer (and more time working in music).

Sometimes we need to push into the work we want to be doing, even without any clear path of anything working out. Dare to start building ways to create tiny moments of fulfillment.

THE SCREEN TIME BATTLE

Screenshot

On Break Up 💔 With Social Media Day on Valentines Day, I deleted the YouTube and Substack apps. I reinstalled the YouTube app one day, lost about 20 minutes to scrolling through Shorts, deleted it again, and have seriously kept the phone plugged in and out of sight most of the time since.

I work from home, don’t drive much, and I answer emails and Slack and Asana stuff when I’m at my computer. Sure, I use my laptop quite a bit, but cutting three hours of iPhone time from my life has felt great.

I spent so much time on the Substack app just “keeping up.” Joining in with conversations, replying, replying to replies, managing DMs, sharing articles I liked. Seriously added up to over an hour a day, easily.

Getting back 7+ hours per week means I can write more. Or repurpose a bunch of the video and audio I’m already making every week. Processing and reflecting on all the calls and interviews I do with people every day.

That’s the work I should be doing, instead of dealing with 100 little pebbles of “engagement” per day on the Substack app.

Sublte nod to Manuel Moreale, saying:

I still have not consumed content on the phone, three weeks in. That’s awesome, and I want that to stay that way.

That was the killer for me, too – video. Making coffee, put on a YouTube video. Scroll the YouTube shorts. Warming up coffee? Repeat. Eating lunch? Catch up the latest Colbert zingers.

A solid week without all that? Just under 20 minutes of screen time per day? Yeah, I wanna keep this going.

FINAL CUT PRO 5 BOOKS

This from January 5, 2007, from my Flickr account:

Freaking A, right. Giant screen. Nice speakers. Working with a mac at work is a dream. Also note the stack of Final Cut Pro 5 books over on the right. Yea, I need to learn Final Cut Pro for this job. Not a bad deal.

And if you didn’t know, I started a job at Field and Stream Magazine on Jan 2nd.

From a post I wrote about my time working on TypePad blog and hand coding HTML newsletters:

I built and maintained several TypePad blogs, one of which appeared on The Colbert Report because one of the authors pissed off a bunch of people, and it created a bit 2nd amendment debate. The blog post was removed, then re-posted, I think. Details are fuzzy, but it I sure do remember perking up when Stephen Colbert flashed the magazine cover on the screen.