Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
Tonight, a friend walked me around their space, showing me the works of art left to her. A precious, sweet remembrance of a dear friend.
Tomorrow, I drive to upstate New York to visit an aunt in the hospital. She’s not an artist by definition, but she made people laugh and smile. What else is art but joy?
Remember the laughter, the smiles, the experences along the way. Celebrate the sunset, the dinner together, the conversations that flow like music into the evening.
Just got off a call with Deanna Seymour, talking about my work with Social Media Escape Club.
When talking about “how I find new people” since I’m not on social media, I just said I meet new people all the time and do cool stuff with good people, like the podcast we were recording!
I then explained that a few of her listeners will hear my interview and go, hey! Seth seems cool, I’m gonna go check him out!
Deanna then hit the nail on the head, then, reminding everyone; “a few.”
Me being on one podcast won’t bring in 1000 new subscribers probably. But hey, maybe 3 or 5 or 10 people over a month, right?
Stop thinking of posting on social media and the infinite reach. Put value in showing up for 10 people.
The work we create doesn’t has an expiration date. The photo books we make, or the poetry chapbook, the music video, the demo tape, the essay, the course, the piece of art. Most of our work is timeless yet we let it expire, starving it of attention as we move onto the next thing.
“Well, the last thing didn’t take off, might as well work on the new thing,” we say, even though maybe 100 people saw it the first time.
Absolutely loving the new Maul – Shadow Lord series. Freaking Two Boots, man.
From Nick Heer:
“I will need to dedicate real, significant time to minimizing my iCloud dependence.”
A tale of photo management, paying Apple $324/year for iCloud storage, date loss, and other dreadful tales of dealing with Apple’s photo app.
I broke up with Apple Photos back in 2024. Wasn’t easy, but I’m glad I did it.
Love these two still images from Noah Kalina’s ‘Out in the Field – Comparing the Phase One IQ360 with the IQ4150’ video on YouTube, on his new Kalina channel.
I sure don’t know much about Phase One cameras, or medium format, but I love following his work, and the epic scenery he captures.
Continue reading “NOAH KALINA IN THE FIELD”
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.
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.
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.
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.