Of all the silly things I’ve done in the last month or so...

Of all the silly things I’ve done since in the last month or so, stressing myself out over how to introduce myself on Steemit has probably been the silliest.

And I’ve been doing some pretty silly things lately.

I had a run-in with a group of Balinese traffic cops that resulted in one of them being thrown off the side of road as he tried to latch on to my scooter as I sped away, followed by my barely escaping a second group a few hundred meters ahead that had been alerted that a fugitive was coming.

I deprived myself of sleep and good nutrition for several days because I was afraid that I was becoming “too healthy” and “too balanced” and that that was preventing me from being creative.

I went to a rave in Bangkok wearing this outfit (photo pre-glitter):

But the fact that I’ve been stressing out about how to introduce myself on this Steemit platform has got to win the gold medal in the March-April silly-lympics.

What it comes down to is this: I’m trying really hard not to care what anyone thinks about me, because that way lies madness. Pretty much every bad thing that has ever happened to me has been a result of giving a fuck about what other people think—desiring popularity, respectability, visibility, what have you. And there is quite literally nothing that causes me to fall more heavily into those patterns than the internet.

So what the fuck am I doing creating a STEEM account? A bit of context... When I uprooted myself from America in September, I swore off the internet for an entire month, and it was the healthiest I’ve felt recently, possibly ever. Psychologically speaking, when I disconnected I was coming out of a full-blown messiah complex that had guided (misguided) my “life choices” for the previous five and half years. And I immediately pendulumed into feeling a total lack of responsibility. Whatever fucked up things people want to do to themselves, that’s fine with me. For a couple of months, I felt entirely alienated from the fate of humanity and from any notion of my role in it. I moved to a little town in Thailand to live simply, cheaply and healthily, and write music. No promotion, no Facebook page, no means to an end... no “end” at all, ideally.

A few things happened during the succeeding couple of months that drew me back from isolation. I finished three songs, and I really fucking liked them. I have been writing music since I was 13, and I think my recent work is a level above anything I’ve written even in the preceding couple of years, which I was already really fond of. And so I wanted to share it. Second, I started journaling, once every 8-10 days at first, then more frequently. A lot of it was raw description of my day-to-day, but I also wrote longer pieces on mental health, money, land, inheritance, political correctness, freedom, my relationship with my parents. I began wanting to share that as well.

But then every time I started to even think about using the internet more regularly, I became very anxious about losing my mind and my autonomy, about going back to caring about what other people think of me and that whole minefield of permanence and identity. Once a song is recorded, or an essay is written, that’s it, the work of the composer stops. Anything else is just marketing. Isn’t it better to write for the sake of writing, and not worry about sharing anything? I don’t want to be famous, and I really fucking hate marketing. So is there any point to publishing anything at all? What good could possibly come of it?

Yet at the same time whenever I finish something I want to share it. My low-level desire for connection conflicts with my higher-level recognition that the times in my life I’ve been most consistently happy are when I’ve kept myself grounded in solitude and lack of purpose. And then my annoying contrarian side butts in and points out that avoiding exposure to other humans does not truly constitute “not caring” what other people think. In fact, exposing my thoughts and vulnerabilities to the rabid criticism of the internet will probably help me care even less.

So yeah, that’s basically where I am with this Steemit profile. Why Steemit, as opposed to any other platform? Because fuck totalitarian bullshit. The internet needs a new form of governance and no centralized company is going to reform itself out of power.

What can you expect to see? Basically a portrait of a reluctantly expressive human in his late 20s trying to stay sane, stay sharp, and stay free from all unnecessary fetters. When I was 22 I was diagnosed with Bipolar I "Disorder," so mental health will be a recurring topic. Food, exercise, drugs, and meditation all fall under that umbrella.

The primary productive activity in my life is music, so you can expect videos of original music as I work towards my second LP (9 songs now complete of 11 expected), as well as covers as I continually work on my guitar and vocal proficiency.

I’m currently based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and have no plans to stop traveling in the foreseeable future. In the last six months I have spent time in Myanmar, Malaysia, and Indonesia, so I’ll probably post a fair amount of travel-related content.

And, like a lot of you Steempunks at this phase of the project, I am deeply interested in dApps, digital currencies and decentralization, more from a sociological, cybernetic perspective than as an investor. And so I’ll probably be posting a series of off-the-wall ideas related to potential uses of decentralized currencies and applications, which I’ll very much enjoy seeing torn down and defended and debated, if I should be lucky enough for that to happen.

That about wraps it up for now. If you’re feeling like you still have no idea what this blog is going to be all about, despite the preceding ramble, I’m with you. All I can say is that I hope you are looking forward as much as I am to slowly discovering the answer.