Sketch
Trying to define the need for behavioral change.
Trying to define the terms of a break.
This networked being - that turns soft-body into binary node.
A more active participation.
Thoughtful lurking.
Browsing the big feeds, the story I tell myself is that it is like casting a net and catching ideas (in a selected pool). Trying to re-think these processes and the ever present experience of distraction, waste, excitement, confusion- it is perhaps more accurate that I am the fish and caught by countless hooks and nets that pull in different directions.
It doesn't make me want to speak, and finding again a place that does reveals that starkly. In the places where I also speak, I also take more out. The speaking is part of it.
I'm describing spaces that don't feel good. I'm there because people speak there that I wish to hear. I'm also hoping to encounter perspectives and ideas that counter my own. There is a potential for dialogue, ever 1-1, but this is in fact reduced by the kind of hierarchy of authenticity; verified, pseudonym, follower count etc. An illusion of presence, which mainly serves to fulfill the aims of orgs trying to snare my attention - at best my presence can amplify this process slightly, and ensnare those few who are closest to me.
Other networks piped in. The ones it is easier to avoid due to their relative newness, just reposted to the old, for the old.
Context is loose.
Nothing can be known.
We feed these patterns of being so easily. Distracted. Together there we feel trapped - they have our family held hostage.
So maybe I'll leave them after all.
Try being true to the ideas that hold me at the expense of what? Continued failure to earn my way. Non-academic. Reluctant amateur.
I see this other space, one that compels me to write- and wonder if it could be home and yet I remember again that I don't know this space to call it home and What it knows of me is even less.
Turn off notifications.
Set a schedule. Break the pattern.
Slow down the cycle.
Write a list of those voices you need to check in with. If possible, prepare the list with urls directly to those users. Do that in an allotted time.
Part of a larger rejectionist, pessimist mentality - the terms of competition within the field are so weighted against success, with the costs often including; distortion of ideas to reflect theme, loss of agency, conforming to industry standards/norms, accepting less the living wage pay. It's the conception of a space as being abusive (perhaps only to my particular ideas about art), and navigating out of that. Psychologically, it shifts the practice. It started as a rejection of applying to things that charged a submission fee. It is remodeled now as a drive to define my own path, that builds a life with humans and art.
alt
fraidyc.at built by Kicks Condor, crossed my feed whilst I was thinking about this over the last few days. This is like an aggregator that can pull in from lots of different networks. It could be a useful tool. It reveals part of the problem though, for me, which is that these things are posted in specific places, a specific context. If you're going to engage with them it is perhaps necessary to journey to that place and do so.
I think I saw this via Pixel's Toot. They have a great site too.
/gemlog/