On Leaving Behind Convention
The ushering in of the New Renaissance will come from artists sharing and valuing their art, not from social media creators peddling slop.
Deciding to leave behind old conventions is scary, like stepping off a ledge without knowing how far you’re about to fall: Will this work? What are the consequences if it does? If it doesn’t?
Lately, change is on the wind. Maybe it’s just me in my current coming-of-age cycle, or maybe it’s the grand mindfuckery being thrust upon every American since for fucking ever—the compacted collective anxiety of ever-progressive consumerism—but I have to think you smell it, too:
The New Renaissance is coming.
Life today—whatever that means to you—is not what I expected it to be. Life today is nothing like the idea I was sold when I was young and dumb and burning a college-sized hole in my pocket.
Somewhere along the way, or maybe gradually like a drip, following “The Way” became synonymous with sickness. And I want to be well.
Change hits you hard and fast when it crashes in, without a break, leaving behind The Way in rubble, achievement and burnout heaped in disarray; worthless. Change forces you to look—really look—at all your decisions, where you’ve been, how much you’ve learned, how far you’ve come, and where you’re headed.
Stepping off the ledge and leaving behind the corporate world wasn’t enough for the full-scale change scratching under my skin. No, not enough. Now, it’s time to peel off layers of industrialized thinking, the kind of thinking that results in more and more, produces more and more disgruntled adults and anxious children.
Still, the critical nature of that step off the ledge does not lessen its intensity, or the fear. Leaving behind convention and forging ahead looks different for everyone, but it often comes down to two questions:
Where do I want to spend my time?
Where do I want to focus my energies?
With any large-scale life change, there’s a corresponding culling of that which no longer suits, no longer works.
Right now, my change-culling includes eliminating social media marketing.
The LinkedIn Lie and Why Social Media Marketing Can’t Work
I dislike social media practically and philosophically. The tool gets in the way of the very connections its purports to foster, the result of which is heinous hypocrisy. If social media marketing (an ironic term) is The Way to successful business ownership, let me off the ride; I’m taking the fucking detour, thank you very much.
When I began my solo business venture in February 2022, I fell victim to the thinking that I needed to build a social media following, that I needed to be visible to be credible and hirable. Maybe that is the case for some, but after three years of consistent posting and following all the sales strategies hyped by so many as “sure things,” I found nothing but disappointment and anxiety.
The value of hours wasted searching for something—Oh, God; Something!—to comment on; the posting schedules; the profile optimization; the templates; the leads—is immense, as is the value of social media coaching services and other help purchased to show me The Way. But The Way apparently means slop, and I ain’t stepping in it.
Social media marketing, for me, feels like stepping into a void, and I do not desire to be Hawking’s spaghetti man any longer. It’s not worth the hassle. It’s not worth the lost hours, the internalized negativity, the comparisonitis. It’s not worth the depletion of creative energy needed for me to remain sane and moving in this change-prone industry.
And since I dislike social media broadly anyway, it’s likely my ideal clients—those authors with whom I actually want to work—are leaving or have left behind social media marketing too. Continuing to post on social media to folks who are not my people seems wild, a slow process of contorting the authentic self to fit into a industrialized box.
It’s time for a New Way, one already working for me: Connection.
Building Connections is More than Comments and the Occasional DM
Marketing bros will tell you to put in the time on socials, to spend eight or ten hours a day on one’s preferred platform playing by the rules and watching vanity metrics. Marketing bros will tell you that, one day, you, too, can have the life of a digital nomad and make oodles of cash working part time. I dropped more than $10k on business coaching just to hear “Make offers for cash and then collect the cash” as THE path to healthy business cash flow. This, of course, for all except social media marketers and business coaches telling others how to make money, is a comfortable lie.
In creative industries when the common person is used to streaming just about anything they want for free, art and the artists who create it are being tragically undervalued. Worse, they’re being overlooked because too many people are being seduced by shiny new tech robots and sharing robot slop rampantly on social media platforms that seem to hate human art.
I mean, when platforms like Spotify are pumping playlists full of AI-gen shit to get out of paying real money to real musicians, when movie studios are relying on AI tools for script analysis and special effects, when social media platforms need templated white-space-heavy how-to posts to drive algorithmic “value,” there’s a problem. Yet, too many fail to see it. Worst, they participate in it, even to their own creative detriment further contributing to the fall of humanity.
Instead, I’m doing things differently.
To find book work, I’m researching and introducing myself to new-to-me publishers with whom I want to work. (And if you know of publishers seeking book developers, please send them my way!). My goal is to introduce myself to at least one new publisher every work day of 2025, which will help me stay on course to make more than 200 introductions this year, 200 digital handshakes, 200 hi-how-are-yas.
I’m also writing more. Not on or for social media but for myself, about stuff I care about. Maybe I’ll eventually submit some pieces for publishing consideration, but for right now, I’m writing for me, to get back into the creative swing o’ things, to dance with words and rhythms and visuals and structures that play with the realities of our beautiful life. Now that I’m not spending a couple of hours a day on socials for marketing purposes, I have free time to create.
Still, that ledge of uncertainty?
The insecurity of invisibility? The freefall to good ole analog connection? It’s scary as fuck. But no good transformation comes without its share of pain.
Convention Is Out, Change Is In, and Art Is Having a New Moment
I dream of a world in which the constant pursuit of "progress" is replaced by the consistent and unfettered practice of art, a world in which modern convenience is let go in favor of traditional and spiritual work, a world in which power moves from those who hold titles to those who hold pens and paintbrushes, a world in which the word is truly mightier than the sword. That world is here, should you choose to recognize this moment for what it is: Transformation.
The New Renaissance is upon us.
At least, that’s what I keep telling my partner. We’re at a crossroads in creative history, a tipping point at which we must decide whether to celebrate art or accept the robots. I, for one, am violently yanking art and artists back into my life’s folds.
Major cultural transformations consistently seem to come from the arts community broadly, and this time I get to be part of the movement toward the real, to show my daughter how deeply valued art actually is and should be, especially when artists start demanding acknowledgement of their work as Work, not accepting the brush off of “hobby” or “play.”
The solo business person—the freelancer, the solopreneur, whatever flavor of working for yourself you prefer—must create their own path to business stability and solvency, must step off the ledge of convention and into the freefall of the unknown. There’s freedom in going offroad, in hacking one’s way through the jungle of visibility, in creating a New Way forward.
Making the choice to quit convention, to quit social media marketing in favor of digital handshakes and creativity is scary indeed, but it’s also so freeing. Sure, there are lingering questions, hesitations, anxieties, and hopes. But right now, I’m choosing to focus on all the reasons this will work because I’m already seeing positive results and realizing a fresher outlook.
I’m choosing books and the authors who write them.
I’m choosing human creativity.
I’m choosing art.
♥ Fal
P.S. If you’re also in the practice or process of leaving convention and creating your New Way, I’d love to hear your story.
Right there with you! Spot on. No socials except Substack. Most of the stuff that used to be an app on my phone is now a physical product in my purse or on my desk. Even downgraded the phone to an old Nokia with T9 texting. That's the beginning of my revenge of analog (if you're looking for a book on the subject, check out David Sax's (sic) The Revenge of Analog. I need to re-read it! On the the creative side, I spent a lifetime believing I couldn't be a writer, novelist, author, storyteller, etc because I'd be a starving artist. In my early years as a freelancer, I used to look up the word, and still find its etymology rather ironic in the grand scheme of things in this truly upside-down world we now find ourselves.