Let the put hands on your work

Being able to hold the work is more vital now than ever.

My wrist hurts—been that way for a few days. It pops when I roll it, so I’ll be taking at least a week off from writing to give it time to rest.

As an exchange, I’ve packed a few ideas into this post for you to ponder until I return. Now, can you hand me the Ibuprofen?

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Touch it slowly and with intention

Last night, just before bed, I reached for my pocket notebook and jotted this idea down, and I’m about to make it my entire persona.

“In an era of dopamine addicted instant gratification, more people are looking for slow, intentional, and tangible inspirations…”

This week, I shared a Note inviting people to ask me anything about my experience as a magazine art director with over twenty-five years of experience, and this one question caught me off guard a little.

The first answer that came to mind was tactile impermanence. Holding a printed project literally feels different. I feel more pride for the project when I can touch what I’ve made.

Seeing great art on social media is cool, but seeing it in person is an experience on a whole new level.

Listening to music is essential to me, but Spotify will never replace seeing a band perform live.

I’ve been working on more projects in The Shed lately, and there’s something nostalgically human about working with tools and the smell of freshly cut wood.

As we continue to move at lightspeed toward our AI-infused future, it will become more critical to work with our hands and make things we can hold. A workbench is too large a totem to maintain my grip on reality, but I can use it to make things that remind me of my humanity, and I plan on using it more often going forward.

It’s time to be slow and intentional, making things to remind me of my capabilities and connect with the tangibility of physical things.

If you could see the obscured backside of the page in the notebook above, you’d see my preliminary plans I made for my next zine, titled Fuck Jeff Koons. I’ll let your mind work the magic on what you think it’s about. I also have the lofty goal of making the zine entirely within the confines of my local library.

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How to win at Notes…maybe

A few weeks ago, I ran an experiment on Substack’s Notes feature where I posted once roughly every hour with different content types: Text only, photos, videos, shares, restacks, quotes, short quips, 100+ words, and the results are not as shocking as I might have expected.

Substack started as a writing platform, but as it has grown, it has made strides to incorporate all types of media, including photos, audio, and video (see examples below). Many OG Substackers aren’t happy about the infiltration of visual and aural stimuli.

I remember back when Instagram was mostly for amateur and professional photographers, and when the platform started to shift toward people taking pics of their lunch, photographers lost their shit.

So that’s where we are with Substack now. Early adopters are losing their minds over having images take over Notes, desperately hoping vertical video doesn’t come next, but we know how this plays out.

Lessons Learned

Posting multiple times a day can help, but excessive posting can hinder, especially if people have email notifications turned on whenever I post (I don’t recommend this last part).

Hot takes were the most interacted with, but maybe not the most on-brand, so it’s possible people who interacted with them were catching the wrong side of me.

Visual posts got the most hearts, but the least comments comparatively, and this goes back to our dopamine addiction from other apps like Instagram and TikTok. As much as I love sharing visual media, I feel like I’m part of the problem, so I need a conscientious approach.

My Notes Strategy

First, I know some here will cringe at the idea of applying any strategy to what they share, perhaps thinking it’s slimy marketing-speak, but I choose to look at strategy as being considerate of my audience by sharing with thoughtful consideration.

If I ever attempt an experiment like this again, my posts will be more focused from a content perspective. I’ll plan all my posts, keeping them more in line with each other with a common thread or story between them.

On a daily practice, though, I will keep my Notes between 3 - 7 per day on average, but not hold myself to a standard.

Interactions yield better overall results (no big surprise there). Active participation is a must, both with comments on my posts and with interacting with others (which is a topic I will discuss more profoundly another time).

Overall, because part of what I’m trying to share is how storytelling is an essential tool for attracting the right people to our work, I’ll keep my overarching narrative front-of-mind as much as possible, mixed with random missives for color.

It’s more about respect for who is already watching than it is about gaining new eyes in my posts (although that is a nice byproduct because they can trust what I’m sharing.

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I had to turn off my brain to find my creativity

Last week, I talked about my creative existential crisis and how I’m finding my way back to the art, and it came together with a few power tools and sawdust.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on upgrading my studio to get it back to a state that encourages creativity, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make first. Instead of trying to force it, I turned to more mindlessly uncreative work by modifying my dilapidated workbench.

I'll never know how a cordless drill and a radial saw helped me with a creative epiphany, but I made a video about it.

Oh, and if you want the longer-form, semi-ASMR experience of watching me upgrade the workbench start to finish, there’s this video on my second channel:

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