I cannot stop using social media, admittedly. I use it to stay sane in periods like this, where I'm alone for weeks on end as my partner is at work, and I don't have a whole lot of work to do myself constantly.
but I want to change the way I use it so that I am spending more time doing what I enjoy rather than subjecting myself to the worst of the world constantly.
One way I'm doing this is by finally ending my unfortunate habit of giving visibility to and discussing the worst transphobic news from around the country (especially on twitter). If I am mourning or hurt directly, I will talk about it, but I am tired of "using my platform" for "awareness" and "advocacy". Everyone has to know at this point, and if they don't, a tweet won't matter. I will relegate the important things to say to longer-form writing and art and projects, because I know that satisfies me much more deeply.
Another way is that I want my photography to be more... of specific artistic intent. I want to start titling my work. I want more of my work (that isn't just "car snapshots", of course) to represent something, even if it's just the specific way I hold the world in my eyes. I want all of my photos to mean something. Social media is excellent at stripping context and intent and vision from nearly anything; I've been allowing it to for a very long time, and I only fought back against that by writing books previously. But I can still fight against it and get to share my work online, which is half of why I use the internet at this point anyway.
To that end, I think I might do a once-daily post of a photo I like, a title, a place, and just a few words about why I took it, why I shared it. For now, I haven't shot for a few weeks, so I'll go through old work, see if I can find some fresh shots I never edited; as I take more, instead of blasting them all out at once, I think I will make the intentional decision to put them out one at a time, with slower pacing.
Obviously, this site is the best suited for this. I may keep doing it on twitter, but I really want to do it here, because of anywhere on the internet, this is the place I feel like people actually look at my work. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
All this said, here's one.
small american community oct 29, 2022 the road between where I live, in rural Idaho, and Missoula, the next "big city" to the north of here where there's an actual airport, is characterized primarily by stunning vistas or sights like this. it feels like half of rural America bears the scars of towns people once called home
