I was a young, 20 something baby Tina in 2007, not even brave enough to call myself an artist, when I moved to San Diego, California to, I don’t know, figure “it” out. I had been slowly burning out in New York City after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, working as the first employee to a now recently disgraced art advisor to east coast elites (more on that later, maybe). I was coming to grips with the anxiety and sadness I struggled with after terminating a pregnancy and then almost immediately being dumped from that six year relationship. I was both physically and emotionally displaced, SO lost and very much operating on impulse. I headed West. No money, no car. I had a bicycle, a shitty, heavy lap top that might as well have been considered a desktop and a fantastic Weiner dog sidekick named Reggie then just a puppy. At the time, cell phones were for actually carrying voice conversations, not much else. Maybe some minor texting that often involved beeper codes. No cameras. No touchscreens. No apps. No profiles. No endless scrolling. Just time.
I think that space that is now very occupied, much to our denial, by devices allowed for introspection, daydreaming even. In hind sight, that quiet was very lonely but authentic and necessary. That quiet helped me recalibrate to the changes I had to come to terms with. I crave that space now but for very different reasons. I am nostalgic for that intangible space where my mind would just float with awareness, guiltless, and void of being uncontrollably pulled to a screen. I have to admit though, as the ever lover of contradiction, during this time, I started a short-lived blog that is still somewhere out in the internet. A short, frozen archive of young Tina, flexing her memoir skills and documenting her way through the everyday yet in the midst of aimless flux. I think I posted about growing tomatoes; the bad mixed media drawings I made that were in the first group show I ever exhibited in at the art supply store I worked for on Highway 1 in Encinitas; a Radiohead concert; Reggie getting sick and then recovering; moving to San Francisco and falling in love with the city as soon as I drove across the Bay bridge for the first time. It was cute. The blog started to collect dust when I started grad school at the San Francisco Art Institute, rest in peace.
Almost twenty years later, I find myself back to reconsidering this blog idea and practice. Perhaps out of desperation for alternatives. Or maybe to feel a little punk? Our relationship to technology has changed drastically since those early Tina days. Phones aren’t just phones, they are everything to us. Wallets, calendars, cameras, they tell us when we get our period, when our bills are due, how to get to places, where the dog is, monitor our steps, they translate, fuck, what don’t they do for us? Like many who are disillusioned with this dependency to our phones, I’m really trying to break up with most social media as a way to help mitigate what feels like a low key addiction that has been normalized. I’ve resolved to focusing on this little real-estate called my website, where I can control my narrative but still continue to connect, share and exchange ON MY TERMS. It’s a long winded experiment. I think we are at a point of reckoning about so much that seems intrinsic to contemporary culture and how it all ties to our health and livelihood. Nothing feels low stakes anymore and everything feels vulnerable. Too many connections are dependent on likes and stories. I’m old enough to know that’s just not substance but I don’t want to break up with all of it either because some of these vices have very much served me and my career as a creative. Addict excuses? No se…. Tricky right?
