Every so often I get the urge to share my thoughts on one thing or another online, sometimes art related, sometimes not, but then ultimately decide against it. It’s not always immediate. Sometimes I try to make something, be it a social media post , video, podcast or livestream, but then I am ultimately frustrated in one way or another.
If it’s a post to twitter, it’s usually a flash of desire that wanes within minutes in line with the following:
Step 1. I see a thing that I genuinely have a take on.
Step 2 Begin a draft.
Step 3 realize it needs to be a thread .
Step 4 decide that twitter not the best place for long format writing.
Step 5 Lose interest.
Repeat bi monthly.
This cycle isn’t always enough to quell my desire to share my thoughts, so occasionally I begin the machinations of making video. This type of delusion only happens once in a while because I’ve done a podcast before (Pretend Wizards, it was a D&D actual play podcast if you’re interested) so I know how much work production is. But every so often I convince myself I can just record a livestream of me talking while drawing and I will somehow manage to create a succinct video describing my thoughts on something. In reality I manage to throw off a random thought here and there punctuated by focused silence.
Today I had an attack of the first kind. I was reorganizing my art studio and was mulling over my feelings about AI. I had a particular thought that I wanted to share (don’t we all have thoughts on A.I! but more on that in another post), reached for twitter and immediately grew despondent. But then I had a new thought, why not just write a blog? Wow, how revolutionary! What a true trailblazer I am.
To be honest, it had occurred to me before, but I dismissed it because either I didn’t think people were interested in reading blogs, or they weren’t interested in reading my blog. Either way, I was concerned about it being a wasted effort, and I was using the internet provided metric for success, views, to determine what constituted a wasted effort. That made places like twitter attractive to put my ideas not because they were a good fit for the format, but simply because my following would see them.
But I realize now I would much rather get few views on a truer expression of myself than many on something compromised by the expectations of others(audience), real or imagined. Sure, it would be nice to get many views, but I should be so lucky to have one person to listen to what I want to say rather than a thousand listen to me say what I think they want to hear.
This is all to say, I plan to use this space for my thoughts in the future when the urge to share crops up. Don’t expect it with too much regularity. Having a family, work, desire to make art and a proclivity for taking on too many projects doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to write but either way I’d like to have a place to do so. I suspect my writing will be somewhat rough as I haven’t done much longform writing, but being bad at something is a poor reason not to start!
Thanks for Reading!
Raphael Rose A.K.A. HopelessBohemian