Durable Things

for fragile people

This week, I helped my mother understand durable power of attorney as if I completely understood it. I’m finally starting to break through Isaac Newton’s knotted prose in The Principia. I finished a painting and started another.

The most valuable thing I learned this semester was not academic. I was an independent musician during the rise of social media. Whatever new thing happened, I had to be there. MySpace. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. TikTok. More recently, as a physics student trying to keep one foot in music, this was a problem.

I’ll share my latest painting with my paid subscribers. Please do not download or share the image in any way. In a world that shares everything, it’s special because it’s only ours.

I’ll share this painting with my paid subscribers for reasons you might guess if you read the rest.

I got a B on a test. If I had done my best, I’d be okay with a B. I was distracted, and I knew it. So, I took TikTok off my phone. Then, Facebook.

Something surprising happened. Not only did I feel like I had enough time to study, I started reading books. I worked on a painting. I watched my son play a video game for an hour. I spent an entire weekend with my girlfriend just chilling.

We don’t know what social media is yet, so we don’t have the correct words. When lionesses hunt together and share a meal, that’s social. We risk relatively little on the internet. In non-trivial ways, the stakes are not high enough.

I think it’s a game that will always be unsatisfying at some point because everyone has a different set of rules. It’s hard to say why when something goes wrong or well. There’s no authority to appeal to — not even the transient authority of cultural consensus, the one thing, however imperfect, that kept us from losing ourselves in the infinite maw of an unreasoning universe.

The more time I spend away from social media, the more time seems to open up. An hour online feels like five minutes. An hour with a book feels like an afternoon.

I know, it’s weird saying this on the internet. You might be reading this on Substack or in your email. Both seem to be a good middle ground wherein the internet is useful and not too intrusive. On Substack, many writers are excited to have a place to share their work. The grain of salt I offer is that I used to make a living selling my music, and I think you know how that’s going.

I wouldn’t tell you what to do. Spending less time online has made me feel better about myself and the world. I’m still making stuff but not feeding the great imitation machine currently trawling the internet.

I wrote down my big ten-year dreams when I started building my business. Then I asked myself, where would I need to be in five years to achieve my big dreams in ten years? What about next year? Next month? Eventually, I figured out what I needed to do the next day. And that’s what I did.

Every year is special and filled with possibilities. For the most part, we decide how we will engage with that. I’m going to read another book. Finish this album I’m working on. Start another painting. Learn more about physics. Take care of my mom.

What about you?

Happy New Year. Your fan,

Jonathan Byrd