Breathing Life

Breathing life: taking something that was sleeping, or almost dead, bringing it back, and putting energy and effort into it. That's where I've been for a few months. Into a lot of areas of my life. Into myself.

About five months ago I started a detox. Partly caffeine, alcohol, anything addictive. But more than that, a detox of consumption. I haven't used social media. No TikTok, no Instagram, no YouTube, no television, no videos, not even the news. I've consumed basically no media in five months.

It has led to one of the most productive times of my life. It has also had a few repercussions I didn't plan on.

The first: nobody is selling me anything. There are televisions at the gym and advertisements all over the airport, so I still see the broad stuff. But there's nothing on my phone, my television or my computer, so nothing aimed at me. My consumption of things has dropped dramatically. I still buy what I'm genuinely interested in, and not much else.

The second one I didn't see coming: the consumption of ideas. We're not just told what to buy. We're told how and what to think. You have to be careful about where your ideas are coming from. Are these your own thoughts, or are they coming from somewhere else? I've noticed, very clearly, how many of mine came from outside. Through this process I've learned to trust myself to a much greater degree, because I feel my thoughts are genuinely my own. I'm not detached from the world. I talk with friends and family every day, and I carry a lifetime of media that shaped me. But for the most part I feel present, focused on what is actually happening in my life day to day.

I've replaced the scrolling and all that addictive behaviour with being productive and getting work done, which, to a degree, can be addictive too. But it feels like a good use of my time: energy into PHLEARN, producing more and better work, and overall trying my best.

I go in phases. There are stretches where I push hard and put in real effort, and stretches where I'm phoning it in. I think that's true of a lot of life, and I don't pretend I've found a cure or some way to rise above it. What I have noticed since the detox is that I'm a lot more focused on the things that actually matter, and I'm not spending energy on the things that don't. I still have a long way to go. But that's the biggest change so far.

The detox has reduced a lot of the cheap dopamine in my system, and that has improved my focus and my energy. I find myself taking on larger tasks and staying with them longer. I started this as a dopamine detox, and I didn't expect to end up here: working hard, putting my best effort forward, looking for the places where I want to push the boundaries and make things better and better. That wasn't the plan. But this is where I am, and I'm curious what the future holds.

Going back through my portfolio, through my life as a photographer, I miss it. I miss creating imagery. I get to be creative in a lot of ways and I get to produce a lot, but I miss photography. Part of me misses the early days, when things were fun and experimental and there was a lot less pressure. I miss the work. I miss the images. I miss creating really beautiful photographs.

I identified as a photographer for so long, and I haven't really been shooting in a while. I'm curious what the next step is. Does it go back toward photography? Hobbies and passions are cyclical, I think.

A lot of hobbies come from being bored. Looking for things that interest you, things to fill your time. People don't allow themselves to be bored anymore. If you jump on your phone the second you feel a little bored, you never give your mind a break. You don't get the downtime, and you never embrace the boredom, and that is a lot of the time when creativity happens. You look for something interesting and fun to do with your time. But if your time is constantly being filled by consuming, there's no reward and no reason to look for anything else.

Do that for days and weeks and months and years, and scrolling becomes your hobby. It becomes the thing you do when you're bored. And if a person spends all their energy consuming, it's very difficult for them to be a creator. Creator and creative go hand in hand. How does someone become creative if they aren't creating? A consumer just consumes what other people create.

What inspires us to push the boundary, to go farther than we normally would? You've gone this far. Go a little farther, and a little farther, and a little farther. Where does that come from, the desire to be better and to push yourself even when no one is looking?

I love the intersection between the unexpected and the beautiful. Creating images that shouldn't exist, or can't exist, but somehow they do. Lighting is one of the most important things to pay attention to in a photograph. If you have beautiful light, you can mess up just about everything else and still have a great image.

My journey started in photography. When I started making three-dimensional art it felt like almost the same thing: creating a composition in real time and building it in front of me. If you look at my photography you'll see I did the same thing there. Rarely am I out just taking photos of my environment. I love to create pieces of art, and I get to position every little piece until it comes together beautifully.

I love the process of creating. To me, there's no better expression of the soul.

So this is me breathing life back into the part of me that makes things. I don't know exactly where it goes next. I know I'll keep going.