Ready For My Fabulous Summer

Not the kind of Undoing where Nicole Kidman investigates her on-screen husband and Hugh Grant makes it close to impossible to empathize with good forces. I’m talking a different kind of undoing.

My lower back, for starters. The pain that I predictably inherited after decades of sitting still and drawing. And sitting still without having any respectable excuse to continue sitting, not moving, and growing increasingly incapable of breaking free from social media and unnecessary tech. The habits that I’ve started changing in the past five years which appeared to be too late to cancel the pain.

A few weeks ago, Manoush Zomorodi released a great book on this topic. Not only is it beautifully motivational for summer, but also enlightening. As someone who’s been working out regularly for the past ten years and thought that was enough, I now understand why my back is screwed regardless of the effort.

The tools and devices that run our lives are designed for machines, not human bodies. And the cost isn’t ours alone. We’ve engineered a world that burns through natural resources in favor of cars and screens. With fewer parks, fewer sidewalks, and fewer reasons to move.

This quote pretty much sums up the undoing I’m determined to commence, and reading this book made me feel like my essay on humans chasing down robots isn’t that crazy after all. Not that I’m actively looking for justification for my thinking, but it is nice to find someone else who's vibing with my unpopular point of view.

So in my fabulous summer, I will be sitting less and moving more. Looking to apply my skillset in settings that allow for this change. In afterschool programs, classrooms, parks, and other places where art and illustration aren’t just about sitting and creating but also about walking, crawling, educating, and experimenting.

On the creating part, my eyes are in need of the cure. This summer, I am particularly excited to meet artists in Orange County who are more traditionally trained and whose focus lives in the hands-on realm. I’m talking painting, ceramics, quilting, jewelry making, mosaics, and others.

I want to learn from them and engage with their artistry to expose my eyes to human-made pieces without questioning if AI was involved. Something that’s been bothering me for months now that AI-generated visuals are the first thing I see when I open LinkedIn. When I go outside. When I watch streaming services. When I shop, and even when I pick up my son from school.

Now, this post is refreshingly not about my ethical beef with AI companies (even though I’ll never get tired of yelling about it at my full lung capacity). It’s about dealing with the consequences of regular unwanted exposure. About the need to physically remove myself from this never-ending pool of mediocre and often inaccurate content that’s fabricated and soulless. Because I’m starting to notice how regular exposure is forcing my perception into flattening and messing with my head all at once.

This summer will be fabulous if I move even further away from the tech, into Dark Forest, and engage with more artists who will help me preserve my carefully curated standard for artistic quality and emotional resonance. Because it matters to me as a person. It matters to me as a parent. And it matters to me as someone who wants to celebrate humanity, but not in the tech-forward Anthropocene kind of way.

Lastly, my hands come to mind. The hands that throughout my career have mostly created in digital mediums and didn’t have enough exposure to tactile engagement. Because they were running after a robot that proclaimed Adobe and tablets as the new shiny standard for creative success.

Today’s robot proclaims something different, but I ain’t listening to this robot. Not anymore. In fact, I never thought I’d say this, but today, I finally miss the nine years I spent in music school learning the piano from the ruthless and emotionally unavailable teachers. Even though that period absolutely ruined my ability to enjoy music theory and public performances (probably for the rest of my life), I miss being hands-on. I miss playing. And improvising.

I miss improvising in visual arts, too. Even though I do start my illustrations on paper from scratch and try to keep up my recently picked up practice of drawing from life on paper and failing, it hasn’t been enough because I spent too much time creating for algorithms and clients who wanted the trends.

This website that most recruiters consider a portfolio blasphemy and some agencies use as a way to get me to sign up for a $700 portfolio review is my way of reclaiming those tactile experiences. It’s me breaking free from unified visuals, from posting my best work, from posting just work.

In fact, at 35, I want to make more of the “bad” art, the one that gets discarded for not being perfect and trendy to present. For not having a cool use case behind it. For not being consistent. Because the “bad” art gets me to use my hands more and explore. It’s what brings back my joy of living and creating that’s been missing for a very long time. It’s what makes me want to get up in the morning and not open my devices.

This is the kind of summer I’m ready to have. The one where I’m moving, dancing, cooking. Meeting people and engaging with handmade art. Drawing from life, from my head, on paper. Not worrying about Claude Design and other bullshit that’s being marketed as the new destination for success.

Because my definition of success is now different. It doesn’t involve corporate greed, trends, social media, and San Francisco as the place to be. I’m leaving San Francisco, I left social media, I don’t care about trends. As for corporate greed, it’s still there, existing, and mauling people who aren’t robotic and productive enough. Who have a problem with sitting still, not moving, not being hands-on, and continuously looking at something that is not meant to make them feel good about life.

My summer will be fabulous!