SNOWY KUTZTOWN

It’s the first big snow in a while, so I went out for a night walk!

The next morning I went out in search of a the perfect spot to sit and watch the snowy world pass on by.

Tell me you prioritize automobile traffic over pedestrian safety without telling me you prioritize automobile traffic over pedestrian safety.

Let’s stop playing games we don’t want to play

I was a one-man band called Seth W.

I played the drums with my feet, I played the bass, and I sang all at the same time.

I played “The Car Song,” “The Jock Song,” “Runny Nose,” and many more. I even covered Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” (The Titanic movie has just come out).

It did this from 1998 to about 2001 or so.

Around this time, I met Tommy (maybe he took the photo above, but I’m not sure). He drove from NJ to see another band on the bill, but he “got” what I was doing. He booked me for a show in his town.

I got to play with Folly. I met Ben Kenney from Supergrub, who would go on to play with The Roots and Incubus.

That was around 25 years ago, and me and Tommy are still buds.

Could I have kept playing shows, writing silly songs, and maybe started touring?

Sure. But I didn’t want to do all that.

As Scott Perry says, play your own game:

“You can’t win playing someone else’s game.

And you can’t win a game you don’t want to play.”

I never got to play arenas or do big interviews, but I met Tommy.

What has this got to do with the Social Media Escape Club?

Well, I deleted my Instagram account on January 1st, 2024.

I met many great people through that app, but after all these years, I didn’t want to play that game anymore.

Could I have met another “Tommy?” I don’t know, maybe.

But just like I don’t want to spend time writing silly songs, I don’t want to waste hours on Instagram every week for some mystical payoff.

I mean, I turn 48 this year. I have a limited number of years left on this flying space rock – do I really want to spend that time staring at my phone?

Sure, “growing my audience” sounds like the right thing to do, but how much time am I investing in the people who are already onboard?

It’s like when I see people on social media say, “Gonna send some goodies to my 1,000th follower!” Is that how you make your first 999 followers feel special?

Instead of chasing more, let’s seek depth in the new year.

Can you name five of your subscribers? Do you know what state or country they live in? Have you seen photos of their pets?

Depth isn’t a growth hack, but it has much better rewards.

Happy New Year.

BURN IT ALL DOWN

Music blogs in the mid-2000s were a power (I was there). A good review could help sell a ton of albums.

After that, we ditched our iPods and piled onto social media and streaming playlists.

It’s all burning down.

I’m surprised how anyone is upset at this. Unlike popular DJs that would make radio shows, the people making these playlists were somewhat “hidden.” Yeah, sure, we knew who some of them were, but it’s not like the big prominent names and faces that we see in the world of radio, you know?

So how then are we surprised that they just replaced everyone with computers anyways?

None of these companies want to actually pay money for editorial discernment. If they did they’d have a full staff of amazing writers, like how Bandcamp used to operate.

Email lists and vinyl records will outlast social media, and I’m adding DSPs to that list now, too.

(via, Bloomberg)

THE TRUTH WILL FIND YOU

Fight Club and The Matrix are two very important movies for me, mostly because I was in high school in the early 90s.

So yeah, I may watch these two movies a lot. I even have a Matrix tattoo.

Something struck me recently. Near the end of Fight Club, when Edward Norton is beginning to realize that he’s Tyler Durden.

“You work nights because you can’t sleep. Or you stay up and make soap.”

Now, the scene where Neo meets Trinity for the first time:

“I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer.”

Neither of these main characters can sleep. They’re searching for something. Your next life, who knows?

And then each character expands because they start hanging around people.

Edward Norton was fighting with himself in the parking lot of Lou’s Tavern, when that guy walked up and said, “can I be next?”

Neo was searching, living alone, living on his computer. But his pals dropped buy for a miniDisc, right?

This then leads to Neo meeting more characters that wear all black and do stuff with computers.

This is an absolutely incomplete line of thinking between the two movies, the two characters. I’m not saying they’re connected, or in the same universe.

But the concept of not sleeping, or searching for meaning in some way outside yourself… I don’t know where this is going, so please stand by.

STARTING THE NEW YEAR

Started my New Year’s Day hike in the dark with some good people.

There was no sun, but there was lots of spooky fog and a bit of snow. I can’t believe I got to witness this view. There was no snow where we parked our cars, and there was just a dusting as we neared the top. But this sight, of all the snow on the trees… it was magical.

The fog made it extra special, too. A delightfully spooky way to start the new year.

BYE, INSTAGRAM

I deleted my Twitter account in June of 2023, but it was harder to let go of Instagram.

Sure, I might miss some things that friends are doing. BUT, who says I have to keep up with everything all the time?

Two people reached out this past weekend to go on some adventures in the woods. This was via my phone number, not a DM.

I talked to a friend today about iced coffee because he sent out a newsletter on the subject.

There will be things I miss. But there will be things that I don’t miss.

I might only have 20 more years on planet earth, if I’m lucky. No one gets out alive.

What if I read a book every week this year?

Or walk 5 miles every day?

And besides – the more time I spend on IG is more value I build for Meta.

Fuck that.

SO MANY PHOTOS

I’ve been thinking of getting a new laptop by the end of the year, sort of for tax reasons, but mostly because I’ve never been in love with my current MacBook Pro from 2020.

That said, I love having a 1TB harddrive. What I don’t love, though, is my Photo’s file over 350GB in size.

The baseline MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip comes with a 512GB HD.

So now I’m dragging my photo file thing over to my 2TB external HD.

I’ve got photos that are 20 years old in the Apple photos app.

From when I moved to NYC. Screen shots from my iPhone 4. Photos from when I biked across most of the US.

So many photos of my life, yet when I pass away this external HD will just get tossed in a dumpster and no one will remember any of it.

Happy New Year!

QUITTING SPOTIFY

Great post from Olivia Rafferty about quitting and deleting Spotify:

My final reason was this: I wanted to own my music again. I wanted to press ‘shuffle’ on my entire catalog and have it surprise me with my own taste. Spotify lets you ‘like’ albums, and save songs to playlists, but you’ll never get a full idea of what songs you have in your catalogue. And what if some artists pulled their work from the platform? I constantly reach for Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo and it’s not there. Owning your music means that you will never lose it at the whim of someone else’s business decision. And it will be a catalogue that exists in its entirety. All together, in one place.

She details how she’ll listen to music moving forward, too. Great read.

Read it here: …So I Finally Quit Spotify

WE’RE TIRED

Tis the season to hear from almost everybody how frazzled, burnt out, at wits end they are! No energy! No motivation! No drive! Exploited and driven to exhaustion, with no energy to make things better, let alone make dinner tonight.