Begin Again

I spent twenty years not making art.

I largely stopped posting on social media about ten years ago, and almost completely for the last six, save for professional promotion. My meditation streak is mostly buoyed by listening to binaural music at night. My “easy” three-question daily journal hasn’t seen a pen in months.

That’s probably worth unpacking, but for now it’s just a point of reference.

First: how did you get here?

I actively avoid most self-promotion. Personal brands make me cringe almost as much as the photos I once posted of my meals and the check-ins I made everywhere I went. Yet I’m finding, in my life and in the world around us, a series of major inflection points and unprecedented occurrences. This seems as good a spot as any to start getting everything rattling around in my head out into the world.

So, like it or not — and I haven’t decided if I do —

this is activated.space.

Not a brand. Not a platform strategy. Not a content calendar.

A space.

A place to practice making thought visible.

A Feudal Attempt

My wife first suggested a different name.

We were out to dinner with friends, and I was on my third critique of late-stage capitalism of the night, when she suggested I start an anti-Substack. I was bemoaning the obfuscation of cost and value in what Yanis Varoufakis popularized as “technofeudalism” — a term I first learned from Cory Doctorow, who describes our shift from capitalism, where riches come from profits, toward feudalism, where riches come from rents.

This isn’t just abstract theory. It’s the contortion of the systems through which our lives are now intertwined.

I was noting how we subscribe to Peacock because joining was covered by our subscription to Instacart, which is discounted as part of our membership at Costco. Or maybe it was how we subscribe to Paramount+ because Walmart+ offers a free subscription as part of their subscription, which in turn is reimbursed by American Express when I charge the subscription to their credit card.

I couldn’t even tell you what percentage of the goods and services in our lives are now subscribed, bundled, rented, licensed, financed, or quietly extracted through some layered arrangement I no longer understand.

Our dishwasher has a proprietary soap system — which, to its credit, isn’t required for use — but it’s only available from the brand, isn’t refillable, has no off-brand alternatives, and naturally costs a premium in exchange for claims of cleaner dishes and more efficient use of supplies. Claims I have no real way of verifying.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just about subscriptions.

These systems don’t only reshape our consumption. They rewire our minds.

It’s my ADHD-addled brain that can’t start because failed consistency feels like complete failure. The belief that longer hours equal better outcomes. The idea that creation only counts if it can be monetized, packaged, shared, tracked, optimized, or sold.

I should have a subscription tier. I should sell my art. I should only create something an audience wants to buy. I should know what this is before I begin.

At my design studio, we instituted a four-day work week, only to see each other online come day five. These systems are hard to break out of, especially when you’re someone who wants to please others, wants to be agreeable, doesn’t want to make too many waves, and tries to hedge through iterative change.

It’s a lot.

Too much, maybe.

But I have too much on my mind to sit in silence. Too many ideas to explore, too many questions to ask, too many thoughts looking for an outlet.

I could scream. I have.

I could torture myself in anxiety. I’ve done that too.

Instead, I need to write. I need to draw. I need to create. I need to make something exist that didn’t before.

Not because of the so-called creator economy, but because part of our shared humanity is the ability to express ourselves, not just consume. To shape the world as it shapes us. To give, to share, to struggle, to find peace and maybe make it last. Maybe help it spread.

Maybe you feel it too — that gnawing sense that we’ve optimized ourselves into a corner. That we’ve made room for too many things that don’t matter while neglecting the things that do.

So here I am, embarking on an endeavor I frequently avoid: restarting.

Beginning again after years of not making.

Beginning again without needing it to be polished.

Beginning again without knowing exactly what it is.

Beginning again in public, reluctantly.

This space is for drawings, fragments, essays, poems, questions, attempts, scraps, starts, returns, and small acts of making thought visible. It is not a promise of consistency. It is not a funnel. It is not a thesis.

It is a place to put things while I figure out what they are.

With this, I begin again.