April 2025 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

NO MORE CORPORATE TREATS

The other night I went to Starbucks, as a treat. You know, a $6 Nitro with sweet cream… really hits the spot.

But I stood there and waited. And waited. There were two kids in front of me. Waited. Waited.

A barista came by and made eye contact, but they were tending to a drive thru order. Someone else just had their head down making drinks.

I get it. I don’t fault those baristas one bit. The company is shit. The CEO is shit. And holy fuck, I’m shit for believing that a treat is giving a corporation money.

Like a chat I had with a friend a bit ago, about boycotting Target. Oh, how we all loved going to Target. But wow, after a bit, we don’t miss it. Just like I don’t miss visiting Twitter or Instagram.

We’ve been so conditioned by the marketing and the culture and the branding that treating ourselves is contingent on giving corporate behemoths our time and our money.

Look at apps, order in the apps, take a photo and upload it to the app – “this is living,” they say.

Anymore I’m becoming a cranky “I got food at home.” I got coffee at home.

Expecting any corporation to brighten by day is a foolish notion in 2025.

I think about skate magazines a lot, mostly because of the photographs. And then I think of how much I love photography, and how little I care about the actual cameras. I mean, I like cameras well enough. I have a few. But the last thing I want to see a photo of is another camera. Or a photo along with what camera was used to take said photo.

I just feel like photographs are literal moments in time, captured, for ever, or at least until the power goes out, or the basement gets flooded (and ruins all your old photo books).

Shooting for 30+ miles of running this week, along with 5000′ of elevation. May have gotten the crazy idea that I’m gonna do a Quarter Everest. That is, doing 7,258′ of climbing in one session. I love hills.

GOOD LIGHT, GOOD NIGHT

A casual walk, a casual bush.

THE PORCUPINE TALKS TO ITSELF

Got in a nice six mile run up to the Appalcian Trail. One new trail took my upwards, and I just off onto another which promised me a spring, but it was not well traveled, so I got off course a bit. Thankfully I recently purchased the All Trails app, which set me straight.

I came out to this firebreak, as you can see above. It was quiet and still. Nothing rustling in the underbrush because, well… there was no underbrush.

As I was descneding from the 1000-ish feet I climbed, there he was, a prickley porcupine on the side of the trail. I stopped, and slowly made my way around them. In my youth I heard they can shoot their quills, but nothing of the sort happened. He just went about his business.

Then my pal Kato commented on my Note “‘The porcupine talks to himself.’ Bill Staines PLACE IN THE CHOIR,” so I did a search and found this video:

That about sums it up. This is the second porcupine I’ve seen on my adventures around the Appaclian Trail in the last few years, and really the porcupine just talks to itself. It paid me zero mind. Didn’t scatter off. Wasn’t spooked. Just kept talking to itself and I made my way around him and continued on my run.

BUILD DENSE THINGS

From ‘3 Ways to Amplify Your Creator Gravity,” by Alice Lemee:

LinkedIn posts and Substack notes and Skeets (that’s Bluesky for the uninitiated) are not dense. They extend your reach, sure, but they’re more like your planet’s atmosphere—thin, easily dispersed, and quickly forgotten.

Instead, you need density. When I say dense, I mean something that doesn’t have a 24-hour life cycle and can’t be plucked from the top of your head.

NO ONE WANTS TO TAKE A RISK

This sounds about right:

“No one wants to take a risk. Not elected officials. Not 19-year-olds picking college majors. Because in this economy, everything is compliance now. As the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco warned in his essay “Ur-Fascism,” social systems don’t collapse overnight. They erode through small surrenders, through the gradual normalization of compliance as a civic virtue.”

From ‘Compliance is the New American Dream‘ by Kyla Scanlon.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

This was written sometime in 2011, and I found it via The Wayback Machine:

I gave my two weeks notice on Friday. My last day as editor of Noisecreep for AOL Music will be Feb 11. I’ve worked with great people over the past 2+ years, and met some amazing artists, but it’s time to move on.

Living life on the road for six months has been a challenge, with all the logistics, managing money (and my mail), signing divorce papers, long bus rides — but it always works out. Maybe not exactly the way I planned it out (three hour delay yesterday en route to Atlanta), but it’s gone pretty smooth.

I just did the stuff I wanted to do on the side. I worked my day job and then I hung out with friends. I emailed a friend 50 miles away and on the weekend rode my bike there. Then I emailed another friend, and I rode 50 miles. My parents were just 30 miles away, so why not ride there next? On and on I’ve gone, asking friends for a couch to crash on and I’ve made it work. I just did it. Yes, it helped that I could work remotely, but I’ve been doing this “blog thing” for about a decade – I didn’t just “get lucky.” At the same time, I didn’t need to quit my job, or save up any money, or buy a new bike (oops!); week after week I just did this on the side.

Do what you love on the side, a few hours a week. See what happens. If it’s really a priority, and something that feels right in your bones, maybe you can keep doing it.

Can’t believe here I said “doing the blog thing for about a decade,” and here I am now in 2025, having down the blog thing for like 24 years now.

Month: April 2025