Two hundred years ago, it was hard to make art if you were a regular person. The very act of running a house and making meals was so much more work and time than it is now.
Technology is amazing, but our phones and the internet are a creeping vine that clogs our hours. It took me years to realize what I was doing, when I was prioritizing online time over actual writing. I believed the lie that I had to be online, marketing myself.
I don’t think people are brands. I think they’re people. And sure, we can recognize that we are businesses with one employee, and we can market our art (if we want to) but we also need to make the art. It’s a lie that we have to be on the internet daily in order to market ourselves and our art daily, so that we stay relevant and remembered.
I think it’s a better use of your time to spend an hour staring into space than it is to spend five minutes looking at an algorithmically-derived feed.
It’s a more efficient use of your time to take a nap than it is to spend ten minutes curating content for likes and reposts.
It’s more productive to doodle on a gas station receipt than it is to comment on a post in order to “boost engagement.”
I walked with my dog in the cemetery and then he walked in his sophisticated and jaunty way on the cemetery beach.
And on the walk home, a woman driving a car rolled down her window and yelled to me over her passenger, “Your dog is so cute!” It made me laugh. It was so jolly.
And why did it feel so different from when I post a photo of Cosmo online and someone in this space tells me he’s so cute? I know there are honest connections made online, but a quick and honest connection made in the actual analog world is somehow so much more meaningful. I could throw a bunch of thoughts and reasons at you about it now, but you can figure it out. You don’t need me to tell you. And I want to keep this short, so you can step away and go walk barefoot somewhere.
I have been using my focus diary a lot, specifically to work on a book I’m excited about. Some months I don’t keep track of my focused deep work hours at all, and that’s fine, but I am finding it helpful with this project for getting into flow. It’s feeling good, to commit to writing this thing.
I remember when I was on Twitter and I would make a good Twitter joke and the sense of accomplishment was there, sure, but it was like this miniature Twinkie of self satisfaction. But I have set up and written some jokes in this manuscript I’m working on that honestly made me vibrate with glee for hours afterwards. It’s such a different thing.
It’s like: posting content online is a miniature Twinkie, and writing for two hours to get to one good joke is like watching a majestic deer emerge from a magical forest at dawn.
(But Julie, you say. This is a terrible metaphor. A deer is not really comparable to a Twinkie. To which I say: Right. Exactly.)
There is no good segue here, but I need to tell you that Help Wanted: One Rooster is going to be a Dolly Parton Imagination Library selection, and I am THRILLED. They sent me a bunch of graphics to publicize this fact, and they are all full of reading joy. (As am I! Let’s all be full of reading joy.)
