Summer hours

The breath of fresh air that is limited social media time.

Having breakfast, taking in the morning sun and mild late spring temperatures out in the back yard that, one year ago, was in the process of being remade. I’m so grateful to be able to enjoy it now. A little while ago, a ton of grade school kids from the school just up the street were being escorted through the neighborhood chanting something about “Let’s go green team (?)” at the top of their lungs. As fast as it began the silence that followed was loud and welcome. I’m happy for the kids’ enthusiasm, but…yeah, the silence was welcome this time. The chirping of birds, ambient sounds of the city and the occasional flap of the cat door announcing one of the cats’ arrival or departure is more than enough. I’m thankful for this bit of peace in an overwhelmingly harsh world.

I was out here for most of the day yesterday, making some tweaks to my website and writing my monthly newsletter for June that was just released this morning. I wasn’t going to try and get the whole thing together in one shot, but it was comfortable and it was nice to take advantage of having all of my thoughts come together at one time. I just let the hours pass and kept writing/editing/writing...

There’s a lot in it about an upcoming show and recent events, along with my “summer hours” announcement. Every summer, from June until September, I deliberately try to limit my posting and overall use of social media. I’ll post when I have something specific going on art-wise, but the overall goal is to leave it be otherwise and not have extended times of scrolling. Like most artists, I need to have a presence on socials, but I’m not about to let it completely dictate my life. We’re here for a short time and the older I get, the less I want to waste that time.

My goal is to “check in” once, maybe twice a day for no more than 5-10 minutes at a time and communicate more outside of social media. I’m going to make more use of this blog for when I feel the need to post more like I do on IG and my other feeds. This means that you may be seeing more of me in your inbox, but because I know that I want this blog to have more value, it’ll most likely stay within the once and maybe twice a week range, if I have that much to share.

Speaking of sharing, not everything has to be shared online nor in newsletters/blogs. That’s why I still keep my personal journals going. I’m not consistent with writing in them, but they serve a very important role in how I process things.

Sharing publicly has it’s merits, but there’s no need for every random thought or opinion of ours to be out there in the wild.

I’m hoping to turn posting here more of a permanent option. I’m not sure I’ll ever totally not be present on socials, but attempting to scale back is a worthwhile endeavor. I’m trying to have this outlet be a more thoughtful, in depth place for sharing my thoughts.

It’s all a work in progress.

Among the Substacks that I read, The Social Media Escape Club has become essential reading for me. I’ve only scratched the surface, but it’s a great resource for finding ways to begin changing our social media habits.

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Wildflowers growing in the walls along a street in San Sebastian, Spain. These were growing like this everywhere there.

[The photos above have nothing to do with this post except I wanted to share them here. I have hundreds of photos from our trip to Spain in late April-early May and trying to slowly work my way through them and figure out what to share and where.]

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I’m planning my day and the first thing I’m doing is heading over over to West Philly to see Tomashi Jackson’s show, “Across The Universe” at the ICA on UPenn’s campus. I may go to the studio afterwards, if only to do a bit of admin work and maybe make a drawing or two and/or do more shuffling around of newly returned works from my recently closed solo show.

A friend’s birthday is today and at the last minute, one of her friends is looking for a place to have dinner tonight.

A shift in today’s plans is already in place.

See you next time!