A living hall of story and craft
Back to the Ground: Leaving the Creator Economy The Vegas Strip of Socials When I finally stepped back toward art as a career, I did what everyone said you’re supposed to do: I walked straight onto the neon promenade of the platforms. It was all there — the carnival barkers with growth hacks, the slot … Read more
Escaping the Creator Economy and Breathing Again My feed felt like a mall food court during a fire drill — everyone juggling trays, alarms, ring lights, and a brand voice, while even the cows have adopted Gen Z cadence and a serotonin-deprived wink (and it must be said: this is not an indictment on Gen … Read more
Why I Left Social Media and Still Beat the Algorithm I left social media for the same reason people stop feeding slot machines: I got tired of watching it eat my quarters and call it “networking.” For years I played the game like everyone else. Post a sketch at peak hours. Reply fast. Learn the … Read more
The Paradox of Praise Watch how the compliments fall. A canvas of splattered gesture earns reverence. A field of simplified symbols—a circle that means sun, a line that means horizon—gets laughed off as childish. A 3D-printed trinket is hailed as sleek and modern; a clay figure with fingerprints still visible is called dated, school-project, “dirty.” … Read more
I’m done asking permission to make my work real. Every time I tried to publish a written book, the process stepped between me and the reader like a series of turnstiles: identifiers, registries, catalog entries, platform rules, waiting periods measured in months. Even when the numbers were “free,” time wasn’t. Paper wasn’t. Patience definitely wasn’t. … Read more
Why Owning Your Own Place Still Matters—On AWS, the decentralized internet, the crashing of everyone’s platforms, and keeping the lights on through it all. The Irony of the “Decentralized” Web The day half the internet took a nap, I realized I’d somehow wandered into the decentralized-web conversation—not because I was chasing a new ideology, but … Read more
The first thing anyone notices about a handmade rosary is never the price. It’s the weight.Glass, stone, metal—each bead has a small gravity, each knot holds a decision, each decade learns to sit in the palm like an animal that trusts you. I made one on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart, and as … Read more
Sometimes I wake up and want to time-travel — not to fix history, not to warn anyone about the future, but just to log onto the internet when it still made fun noises. You know the ones. The slow static roar of a modem connecting to something bigger than you. The little thrill when the … Read more
You can feel it in your bones some days — the quiet, humiliating grind of being treated like free entertainment, the sensation of standing in a room you built with your hands while strangers file through and take souvenirs you never agreed to give. You post the painting, the poem, the animation that ate half … Read more
At some point, every independent artist realizes that “freedom” on the internet comes with a checkout button.You start with one subscription, then another, and before you know it, you’re paying monthly rent to five different platforms just to exist. That was the day I stopped leasing my livelihood. Not because I hate technology — but … Read more