A Calm In the Chaos

The “hero image” for this post is a photo I took back in 2018. It’s on the backside of West Seattle, across the street from Me-Kwa-Mooks Park. I was caught by the view here because of how quiet it is with the water, islands, distant mountains, and evergreens, despite a busy metropolis being directly behind me. Along with Myrtle Edwards Park, it’s one of my favorite spots in the city I’ve found. It’s a reminder that we need a place to step away from the chaos of everyday life.

I think for the first time in about five years or so, I’ve given my personal website a title. This place is a refuge for me, away from the noise of social media. I have a couple of friends who insist on using Snapchat to communicate. I hate the app because I find myself waiting to see if there are updates to the stories on there, and that’s just the ones from my friends, not the tabloid-style ones down below. Same goes for Instagram. I often find myself doomscrolling through story feeds. Then there’s Facebook, where most of my friends and family reside, but it’s become the place where I can get bombarded with Trump news. I feel like I’m in one of those cartoons from The Oatmeal where the character is pelted with soccer balls or whatever else is news-relevant at the time the second they open their laptop, except in this case, it’s tangerines.

This is the place where I can write in peace, without a timeline in my face while I type. I can talk about what I want to talk about here. I can digest complex thoughts and topics out loud. Sometimes I may even do a little research on a subject. These are all things social media culture doesn’t permit much of without interference.

I’ve already stated how I want to dig into my music reviews going forward, going track-by-track with the albums I listen to. I will post my photography here, but I’d like to share photo stories, giving a little background to what I post. I’ll continue to post about life, tech, and sports as well.

The older I get, the more I find I value peace. Something I’ve learned over the past year is peace takes practice. It might mean removing toxic people from your life, doing a digital detox, meditating or exercising more, trying to eat better, or getting better sleep. These are all things I’ve been trying to some degree. But, I also need a quiet creative outlet and this is it. I value this thing more the longer I have it. Where social media can often be a facade, this will always be much less of that. I feel like we need to get life back to being at a more human scale and this is simply my contribution to that effort.