we don't have to accept our default setting.

Before we get into today’s dispatch I want to put it on your radar that I have waitlists up for all future classes I’m dreaming up right now for the end of 2025 and into early 2026. I’m switching to waitlists because I want my business to be more democratic. I want to teach what you, the wonderful person reading this email, wants to learn.

You can see what I am excited to teach here and join the waitlists for any of the upcoming offerings. Sign up for everything you are interested in. Think: like rank-choice voting where you vote for all choices, and the one with the most collectively wins. My goal with having this be on a separate email channel (Kit) is so I can both track interest and share special waitlist only*~*~ discounts before classes go live to the public. Sound cool? Ok rad.

walking on Mt, Diablo - photo by Joy Newell

Last week during my social-media scroll break I had a three hour long phone call with one of my best friends. We always talk about how the state of the world impacts us as queer people, and for this particular friend, he shared that things finally got to him and he fully “crashed out.” He became totally nonverbal for a full day after bad news in the world, bad news at work, and horrible weather made “normal” human functioning impossible. He needed to reset.

His version of this meant spending the whole day in bed, unable to motivate himself to do more than read and order delivery. The term “crash out” has been used all over the internet. It’s original intent was to describe reckless emotional breakdowns but in true online telephone-game abstraction, I’ve seen it used to mean abrupt bursts of rage, cutting all ties and quitting something big, for some it means finally resting, and for you and your own experience of internet culture the term could mean something else entirely. 1

What draws me to it is that we’ve normalized that things are thoroughly too much. We don’t have to pretend to be thriving in a corporate-approved-productivity-routine. We don’t have to pretend that mythic consistency is even a real option right now. We can collectively acknowledge the state of the world is incredibly abnormal and we are all allowed our own spectrum of chaotic to hermit-like responses.

In recognition of how dysregulating the world is right now, we all have things that used to work as strategies to soothe that just don’t anymore. For me, one of those things was scrolling Tiktok.

On Monday, I got back on TikTok and boy, my nervous system was not ready! While it used to feel like my favorite place to show up online for what I call “funny, haha” time and some sharp, short video essays, it’s different now. The algorithms on all of our apps that used to provide us with the feelings of rest and novelty in 2020 are now just haunted houses.

I saw a horrible and violent video within the first 30 minutes of my scroll and I closed the app. Later realized it was AI generated.

AI videos have far surpassed the Turing Test2 and I’m incredibly frustrated by the consistent lack of common sense from the big AI companies. As they haphazardly release tools of propaganda and horror into the world that they know can cause massive mental health and political harm. That video gave me a panic attack. I felt myself careening into a bad space.

“This is the space where I’m supposed to be promoting my work?! My teaching, my ideas, my art?”

I know for a fact that you’ve probably seen something, AI generated or not, on your feeds this week that activated you, made you upset, or sent you careening towards a crash out and so, I want to try and help.

Instead of creative prompts this month, I want to offer some structures as softer places to land.

I sensed that this would be more in alignment with the thing we all need right now. Many folks going through The Hikers Way with me are also on social media breaks this month. There will still be two creative prompts for paid subscribers coming next week with a gallery of images like usual. But this soft-landing dispatch is free.

when the world is too much, look at the small world of beauty in lichen around you at your local park or nature preserve. be prepared to be amazed. - Photo by Joy Newell

Ok, so first, we need to take stock of all of our platforms that we show up on.

Places like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, BlueSky, Facebook, and yes, even Substack. Write down three big things:

What do I intend on receiving when I show up here? OR What am I looking for when I come here? It doesn’t need to be something specific like “bread recipes” I just want you to bring awareness to your intentions when you show up. Are you looking for community? Inspiration? What vibes do you hope for?
When I show up this week, how does it feel? OR What am I actually getting in exchange for my time? Think simple, bullet point lists. Just open the Notes app a few days this week and write stuff down, is anything feeling bad? Was it a net positive for your well-being to be there?
When I show up here, do I feel compelled to stay for an infinite amount of time or just stop by and leave? OR Does this feel like an addiction? With TikTok I get lulled into a trance where I will have my head down, staring at the screen for hours and this gets even worse when I’m tired.

Ok. Now that you’ve done full analysis on platforms, let’s rank them based on how they feel.

For me the list goes from good to bad:

Podcasts -not technically a platform but it feels like one or a mostly stat-free replacement. taking a week off social made me realize podcasts give me more than scrolling feeds do. I’d rather go deep with people and remember their name than go shallow.
Discord - I freaking LOVE discord. It reminds me of message boards in the early 2000’s, feels very old internet. Chronological feeds, good vibes, and real, genuine connections.
Pinterest - its a scroll-space with no bottom BUT they finally let us opt out of seeing AI slop and I am loving showing up there again. it feels like somewhere between instagram and tumblr in 2012.
Substack - I don’t love this place, but I am building really valuable relationships with people here and feel empowered knowing I can leave with all of you in tow at anytime to another platform, so that’s freeing. Really sick and tired of the growth grifters and AI evangelists here though. I always block or mute folks on my feed using obvious gen AI images.
YouTube - there is the ability now to ask the algorithm to stop showing you certain channels - sorry Hasan Piker, I need a break - and only look at your subscriptions instead of the home feed. Plus, it recommends short film style gems like this that stop me in my tracks.
TikTok - this one is the worst for me I have both high days and low days. When I have videos perform well and go “viral” I feel like I’m coated in a soup of anxiety and my body feels like a flesh prison. So, maybe this one is a net bad for my mental health. Working on rebuilding my website instead feels like a net good.
Instagram - I boycott Meta and left in January. Being on there reminds me of the long shadow of my Kansas City art world self but have of late reconsidered what it would mean to use the space as a somewhat passive portfolio and check in space. My business has suffered from leaving, and I wish the boycott had been bigger.

Now that you have some examples and your own awareness, devise how you are going to take action.

Are there specific platforms that you are sticking to even though it gives you the ick because it’s “where your friends are?” Do you feel like you really don’t wanna lose your community? Trust me, I get it. I think what we need more than harsh breaks, and strict rules are opportunities to disrupt our default mode.3

Often the things we do with our phones make them into thieves of our time rather than partners in creativity. Those things we do are ingrained habits, likely things that we started doing at the height of the pandemic when we were stuck inside, craving genuine connection.

But now, those old habits are our default. Our brains tricking us to falling into patterns that trap us repeating behaviors that keep us disconnected.

Here are some suggestions:

Can you replace the app icon of the digital space you deemed most toxic with Notes, Voice Memos, or GarageBand to help reconnect with yourself?
Can you remove that app for a certain number of days each week and only check in with it on specified days or on a different device? (that’s my TikTok plan)
Instead of scrolling reels and short form content could you surround yourself with a world of inspiring images that you guide the curation on over on an app like Are.na, Pinterest, Tumblr, or Sublime?
Instead of being inside your house, could you go on a short, soft, gentle walk around your neighborhood and take some photos of the fall colors or plants you see in bloom? Then when you edit those, can you share them with a friend?
Can you make a list of all the friends you feel like you’ll miss on a certain platform? Instagram makes this easy with the stories it tries to show you. Can you set up phone calls, virtual or IRL dinner parties, or pen pals with them? My friend I mentioned earlier has been sending me handwritten postcards he thrifted. I cherish them all and hang them up in my studio.
Do your favorite creators on the most addictive app have an online community you can access through Patreon, Discord, Substack, or another space? Can you afford the small monthly fee they might charge to access that if it means getting to make real, authentic connections?

You might need to retreat away from tech all together:

For me, when I am heading downhill I need to reconnect with nature and creativity immediately. It’s a crucial imperative. It’s the whole reason I wrote The Hikers Way as it’s a map of my own path back to myself after working at Apple, steeped in the tech culture that was taking more than it was giving.

I want to give you some examples of the nuclear option, retreat. You don’t have to totally become a luddite, but time out in nature might make you long to become one.

The following bits are my own personal strategies that might not work for you. I live with depression, generalized anxiety, and Long COVID, when combined with things not going well I’ll spiral further into the default setting and make myself worse. I am not a mental health professional though, and if you are really struggling, please seek out support where you can. You absolutely matter.

one of my photobooth images from my mini-blog where I’m doing the Hikers Way. Instead of letting myself scroll at night, I’m winding down by making weird electronic music that my partner says sounds like its from the early 2000s

First, let yourself take a rest day and be creative by divorcing outcome or results from the process.

These are the days where I slam my laptop shut, ignore my todo list, and let myself just be in the studio. A big privilege of self employment I know, but I feel like it's way too easy to get caught in the trap of doing endless work when I’m dysregulated. Seeing “inspiration” on an app, often pushes me to shift from “resting” into marketing, endless working on a treadmill of content.

These intentional moments of rest with our creative practices are where we can realign and remember why we are artists in the first place. Creativity is how we feel into our feelings and for me, it’s a fundamentally important practice to connect to my intuition.

Our creative practices are sacred spaces where we can come home to ourselves, quiet the noise, and find alignment with our values once again. It doesn’t need to be “for money” to be valid. Actually, you don’t even need to make things that are even that good. They just need to be for you. That’s been my practice lately.

Call in sick and go outside. Personal days are a benefit and you should take them more often.

My main goal when I quit my job at Apple was to start a retreat center because going out into the woods to camp or even just to hike for a few hours would reset my mind back to factory settings. This was the only thing that would get me out of my default mode at the time and rewire my priorities.

Every time really bad things at work would happen, I would take a sick day and walk in the woods. Mental health and physical health are all a part of your body! Stop seeing the idea of taking no sick days as a badge of honor, it’s actually super ableist to your disabled colleagues! I want to normalize using your time off to take care of your headspace so you don’t crash out, especially right now.

People in the US don’t take enough time off because we are culturally deluded by the false myths of the protestant work ethic. No, working harder won’t get you there faster, it will cause you a chronic illness. Work addiction is real. I suffer from it. We have internalized this feeling that taking time to rest is bad. It’s not.

Take the day off and drive to your nearest nature preserve with a backpack. In the pack put a simple snack, a water bottle (full), and some way to ID what is around you. Merlin Bird ID and iNaturalist are both good apps for this to use your phone for good.

Get to know the birds, the names of trees, and one or two plants. Awareness helps the idea of being out in the woods a lot less scary and can help you ease into a state of rest and calm that makes evaluating the prompts I proposed for you earlier feel a lot less frightening. ✿

As a reminder, if you’re looking for more support, The Hikers Way 2.0 is out now and is completely self-led. No live classes to attend, just 16 podcast episodes, 2 previous class recordings. All for $120 with the option to add on one-on-one time with me if you need it.

compassionate strategies for soft landings instead of crash outs