My First Post - "Hello World!"
The day has finally come. My earliest tinkering with the idea of deleting all social media and abandoning the practice completely started when me and wifey were still living in the apartments, so, must have been 2018ish. With post-pandemic time-drain in mind, that feels like it was “just a few years ago” and makes me feel like it’s no big deal, that I haven’t waited that long…but that was almost a decade ago. That was before travel, before releasing records, before touring with Nothing More, before I started grappling, before SO many things, before before tying the knot even, before houses, before kids. A wish-wash of time, somewhere between just now and forever ago.
The first day of 2018…
I’ve really been wanting to do this. Starting a “blog” essentially and having a place to write and document my thoughts and ideas, not just my “update” pictures of life events (or whatever social media has us believe counts) via Instagram. I have always wanted to have a separate place, a deeper place for more long-form idea expression that could resonate with people, particularly my students, and have a space to philosophize together like we have done in those after-class hang outs trapped inside the class with our thoughts for so many years. I love those moments, but they are always so short.
A big reason I never pulled the plug on socials officially, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how unethical and horrendous they became, no matter how damaging they became to my mental health that I would even take summer-long breaks (my most recent break has been over a year), is because I had been, as a creative, conditioned to believe they were required as a “marketing” tool. I mean, how else does one have a band and “tell” people about it? I feared for years that without social media no one would know when I was playing shows, when I was releasing new music, when I was doing this or that…and if no one knew, and no one cared, what was the point of the creative life?
I realized again and again that train of thought wasn’t just technological-comfort-zone thinking - it also wasn’t true. There were so many shows I told people about in person that had incredible turn outs. There were so many musical projects that I couldn’t stop talking about with people that tons of people listened to and enjoyed and still do. And there were SO many shows on social media that were promoted with tons of posts and stories and we played to no one. It wasn’t the socials really…it was the IRL convo’s that really did the work. Almost always. The same thing happened with photography, with jobs, with school even. I remember when the entire graduate world of academia told me historians must have twitter - I got a prestigious fellowship, ABD status, and fulltime-professor job and I never made a single tweet in my life.
I guess that small “almost” held a much stronger hold over me than I thought. Time passed, I continued to hear and read more and more about how the cultural zeitgeist surrounding social media was really more in agreement with me than in disagreement, atleast, for the most part.
When Cyrus was born, I didn’t really talk about him on social media, and until the last picture I posted a year ago (my last ever post on Instagram) I had not posted a single picture of him in over four years. It felt weird. I knew in my heart it wasn’t a “hiding” thing, I spoke about my son and overly showed pictures on my phone of him to everyone in real life…it just felt like social media didn’t deserve him. He was too good, he was too special for Instagram. I’m not sure if that makes sense to express in that way…as many of the people I had on my social media were people who knew Cyrus in real life..it wasn’t about the people as much as it was the software - the environment, the negativity of social media….that horrible life draining place didn’t deserve to have my son share the same spaces it inhabited.
Cyrus and his current obsession
I feel great about posting Cyrus here. It feels normal. If the universe blesses us our daughter will be here in May and I’ll feel great about posting her here as well. This is technically for others to see, it’s public, and I DO want others to see it and engage with this blog. But this is my blog, for my purpose. I own it, its on my domain. It’s not for marketing, and there are no friends to follow or feeds to waste life doom-scrolling through. I have made a lot of connections with people I hope to maintain, and when I started thinking about how I was going to write this I thought about all this shit I was going to say and prepped all these ideas, but instead I ended up free-flowing, simply saying what I felt right now.
I truly think social media has become a societal cancer. The damage outweighs the positive every time.
I’m glad to be done with it and doing my own thing.
Planning on doing some weekly content here mostly for my own intellectual venting, for others who may be interested, and for my own history. Reminds me of the LiveJournal days. I know it was awesome to look back at the writings and photos of my parents and grandparents growing up…how cool would it have been to read their thoughts on culture, society, and our broader lives…
-N.H.