Almost analog

(except no, not at all, not really)

Good morning, digital friends. I write you from a different, and more antiquated-feeling platform. I’ve decided I want to simplify my life, and remove anything that feels like excess media, be it social, news, whatever. When I joined SubStack more than two years ago, it felt like a blogging platform, but now it feels like social media. When I visit my SubStack homepage, I’m inundated with blurbs written by people I don’t subscribe to or know. I do not want all of this information. In fact, I need not to have all this information. Generating art , creating something from nothing–an image or a story from scratch–requires, for me anyway, an emptier, clearer head. I need more space for the information I want to put in there that informs what I draw or paint or write. There are some SubStack blogs I’ve come to love, so I’ve simply added them to my bookmarks, I’ll visit them when I feel like it, like I used to do with favorite blogs back in the day.

Back in the day! Indeed I was an early lover and follower and writer of blogs. WordPress may not be as flashy or monetize-able or shareable, but it feels like my internet home. I’ve used it on and off since around 2005 and and there’s a reminiscent feeling of making something exciting when I type into this window. I want to go back to that. I crave those simpler times of less information and making something in secret, indifferent to subscribers and likes and post analytics. Here, I can also control the design and color a bit more as well (not quite so much as I could in my days of full-fledged web development and coding, but far more then SubStack allows). I’m still experimenting with designs, so please be patient.

I’ll share the same sorts of writing as I shared on SubStack, but with the addition of more in-progress visual art projects. Please feel free to unsubscribe if that doesn’t feel like your speed. For the past few weeks, I’ve been mulling over some words and ideas that center on the political climate in our country, both nationally and locally–not ideas, but behaviors. I realize that I am somebody of no importance, and it doesn’t really matter if I write these words down, much less share them. But the relative importance of my words isn’t what makes me a writer–rather, the need, the compulsion, to put them down.

Until then,
Katie