Tag: texting

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Outbound/Inbound

A good line from Sumana:

Marketing is an outbound chore that increases the frequency of inbound inquiries.

This sums up a lot of my aversion to being visible (and easily reachable) in online spaces right now. There’s a negligible line between “marketing” and “posting photos on Instagram” (irrespective of what those photos show) because my work and my online selfhood are largely the same. If people remember that I exist, they might send an inbound inquiry. “Inquiry” here can mean anything from a simple heart emoji in response to an Instagram story, to a complex email asking for advice. Both elicit the same sense of panic: someone needs something from me, and I don’t have what it takes to give it to them.

What’s worse is that I often don’t even have what it takes to tell them I don’t have what it takes.

This is embarrassing. I feel shame around it. I know a lot of people deal with it! But I feel shame all the same.

The other thing I catch myself thinking about is that this is totally a Me Issue. I mean, yes: I can make direct requests that people not message me in certain places. I can turn off comments. I can ask loved ones to let me make the first move in initiating conversation. But I’m not sure that’s actually the solution I want.

I want a list of readily available texts or emails I can send that let people know where I’m at without needing to draft them from scratch when I have no spoons to do so.

Take the little autoresponder texts that Apple offers when someone’s trying to call you: “Sorry, I can’t talk right now.” “I’m on my way.” “Can I call you later?” I finally found the menu to change them to something in my own voice the other day because I was so sick of going through the same cycle: getting an incoming call, thinking “AAAAAAAAA I CAN’T TAKE THIS RIGHT NOW,” looking at the available autoresponder texts, thinking “UGH THESE ARE ALL TERRIBLE AND ROBOTIC,” and then taking the call despite not being in the right place to do so.

And of course by the time the call is over I’ve forgotten about finding the menu to change the text response options.

It’s the tech equivalent of only remembering that you need to buy a new shampoo bar while you’re in the shower and unable to do so.

Anyway, I’ve had some truly delightful inbound inquiries lately. I don’t want them to stop. But I do want to build more internal trust around this: that I’ll respect both my own time and other people’s when I step into conversation.

Brain Food

A Donut

On April 16th, 2018, a friend of mine began a 100 Day Project—a collection of self portraits in ink, framed as a meditation on gender.

The tiny illustrations began to pile up: two weeks, 100 days, a year.

They kept drawing.

At 862, they stopped sharing to Instagram, but said they would probably keep going in private. (We love to see it.)

And then, a couple days ago, a text:

A screenshot of a text message which reads "I'm on day 1006 of my little drawings. Quite something."

I asked how they were feeling about the milestone.

A screenshot of an iMessage chat dialogue. The speaker on the left says: Honestly right now my relationship to these drawings is similar to flossing. It’s something I do every day and then I feel virtuous And I actually like that I’ve managed to make it that much of a habit They’re not phenomenally interesting but the continuity and the habit is cool. The other speaker replies: Mm I really like that point where it ceases to be about the art itself and shifts to being the behavior around the art. The first speaker says: Yeah that’s an interesting place. And probably where most art actually comes from.

And now I’m laughing thinking about Benoit Blanc and donuts, because this is how I feel at moments like this—screenshotting a perfectly normal text conversation because something about it makes me think “HANG ON”.

Not the art, but the behavior around the art.

A donut! One central piece, and if it reveals itself the fog would lift, the arc would resolve, the slinky become unkinked…

It feels right, at least in relation to my own practice, which is often very much predicated on rules and rituals. (30 Days of Portraits. 100 Demon Dialogues. 1000 words a day.)

These are all projects where the structure of the undertaking supersedes the content. Fixating on the satisfaction of completing another link in the chain allows my less-than-perfect artistic skill to slip past the Watcher at the Gate undetected. Success is defined as adherence to the practice, not excellence in the craft.

The joke, of course, is that they’re one and the same.