I’m just here now, really.

I’m writing tonight while I sit watching the raindrops slide down my car windshield and considering the way I’ve been feeling in my art this week. It feels more apparent that my very happy and healthy obsession with painting is being interrupted by certain exposures that I allow to enter my life.

My social media use, I realize, is a distraction and procrastination partner. I’ve left social media before, but then worried so much that my art would not be seen otherwise and I missed the relationships I had made.

Today, I’m committing to a return to the calmer and slower pace I enjoyed before letting social media become a senseless habit. For me, life was so much simpler and felt more alive and my in-person and most important relationships were nurtured more frequently. I’m really leaving this time.

Even the DJ’s on the radio while I drive are feeling refreshing to me. It’s these good, old-fashioned experiences that happen for us when we flip on certain FM or AM stations and hear people talking. It’s not some algorithm-curated, how-did-you-know-what-I-was-thinking experience feeding on my deepest weaknesses and reminding me to correct something human, healthy and natural about myself.

This week, I heard my local DJ sharing about his childhood summers. Growing up in a town where most couldn’t afford summer camps for their kids, he had his bowl of cereal with an hour of cartoons and as he put it, “My Mom then basically said, there’s the door. Be home for lunch.” He happily shared how the same happened after lunch and dinner, “come home when the street lights turn on”. I loved the way he talked about riding bikes around and making up games with the neighborhood kids, “there weren’t enough of us to have a right-field, so we used the tree”. It wasn’t that he was sharing something new, it was the conviction in which he knew that this was great. I’d like to believe that we were agreeing that this, ‘heads, hearts and eyes up and available’ is so much of what our culture needs.

Without a doubt, one of the things I’m most grateful for in my life is having a childhood like this. My brothers and I were always outdoors, on our bikes, playing in the woods and swimming at our neighborhood lake. I remember running home when we realized we lost track of time. The fastest of us would throw the door open, panting, to tell Mom we were home, saving the rest of us too. What a fantastic life we had.

This is the story I want to revive in my own life and for my family again. Simplicity. Where the wonders of nature ring loudest of all. The calling in our souls can be felt so deeply, we are irresistibly propelled to act upon them. And, not be missed, doing the hard work of: completing boring tasks, taking the first step in beginning big projects, resolving my worries, fears and insecurities without numbing myself with a most-unimportant device…this will all lead to more fulfilling life in which each moment counts. I imagine time will slow and each day will stand a chance to feel unique and satisfying, even exciting.

The rain on the windows has slowed. I can see my breath in the cold shelter of my car. I will be here in this blog, writing often, whenever I have the urge to tap that familiar icon and distract myself with mindless, advertisement-filled scrolling. I will share updates about my art and other thoughts, in a similar fashion as in this post today. Thank you for being here.