Category: Life

ANSWER QUESTIONS

As always, Ash Ambirge bringing the gems:

If you’ve ever been like, ugh, HOW AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO MARKET MYSELF, why not ask yourself a new question: how can I show up & just answer my customer’s questions?????

In the early days of my Social Media Escape Club I’d just answer people’s questions on Substack’s Office Hours threads. I’d even link them to Substack help docs. I did this so well someone from Substack noticed and reached out and asked if I had any interest in joining their help team (no, thank you).

Even for the bigger picture questions, like “how will I live without social media?” I don’t have the full answer for anyone, but I have bits and pieces that I’ve learned from my experience, and how other people have done it.

Sometimes you don’t need the full answer, you just need to the experience of reading and talking to a bunch of people on the same journey.

TURNING 49

It was my 49th birthday, and I treated myself to some place fancy. That is, the 110 State Game Lands access road, on a chilly rainy evening here in PA.

There’s a gate at the entrance, then a gate near the “top,” which is about 1.5 miles, and about 500′ of climbing. This is one of the only hilly routes where I can run the whole thing, and by run I mean shuffle and slightly jog, but hey, I couldn’t do that a few months ago, so I’m stoked.

Also, I used to do just one lap. Up and down, and call it night. Last night I did it twice, so just over 1000′ of climbing, six miles total, and felt great.

This is the last year in my 40s I guess, might as well keep things moving.

SURFACE AREA

There’s the saying to increase the surface area for luck, but I’m telling you… meeting new folks increases the surface area for COOL STUFF.

I just got off a Zoom call with some great folks and met Andrew White and I want him to take photos of me running up the hills I try to run up (just kidding, I’d look awful), and also discovered Andrew(?) Byrd who is running an analog recording competition – making and recording music with no computers!

I know, I know… the surface area thing… for networking, for finding jobs, yes, sure. Of course. But wow, there are just so many amazing people out there doing great work.

DOUBLE UPS

Doing more of the thing you want to do usually leads to more of what you want to do.

That doesn’t mean I should eat pizza and ice cream everday, of course, but the math adds up soon enough.

Months ago I got back to my running practice. Some days I just couldn’t grind through a three or four mile run.

Sure enough, I wasn’t eating enough to have the energy for those runs, so they always sucked.

Once you start eating to run, running gets easier.

And so now I’ve run 30 miles a week for the past few weeks, and usually hitting 5000′ of elevation along the way.

I’m not the fastest, but I’m probably the only ding dong who runs up and down this dirt road with no guard rail at least once a week.

And this past Sunday I did it twice, because hey, at 48 years old if you’re not challenging yourself, most likely no one else will, either.

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.

PHOTOS ARE FOREVER

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).

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.