It’s July 4th. I open instagram.

The first story I click is from a friend who’s been a bartender for a decade. She shares a post where the phrase “there is absolutely nothing to celebrate today" is repeated on 20 slides of a carousel, with images of dead bodies and bomb-torn rubble. 80,000 like the post.

12 seconds have passed since opening my phone.

I return to my home feed. I see Sam Altman sharing his perspective on July 4th (he's the founder of OpenAI & creator of ChatGPT). He writes how, with all it's flaws, America is the greatest country in history to live in -- if you are a technologist/scientist/entrepreneur.

What we call goosebumps is an instinct many mammals have to increase their visual size when they feel they threatened by a potential predator. No one in public life gives me that feeling more than looking into Sam Altman's eyes.

78 seconds.

I scroll past this and see Donald Trump’s team has posted another AI video. This time of him and his wife watching fireworks. It has been up for minutes and over 40,000 people have liked it. How many of those are human? How many are bots?

I have yet to see an AI created video that doesn't feel like I'm looking at an organism that isn't meant yet to be seen, like it needs many more nights of gestating in darkness. It feels wrong in a way we haven't found words for yet.

83 seconds.

Next, I see a video of an artist friend. She’s outside at an event and is face-painting children. There is a long line of kids laughing, waiting their turn for their faces to be transformed into tigers, wolves, and cheetahs.

These children are the first smiles I've seen on my phone today. I find myself smiling too, nearly crying. I close my eyes for a moment and send a prayer of gratitude to my friend who uses her account to share honest, simple joy and goodness. These children's smile changed the momentum of my morning.

It has been 3 minutes and 31 seconds since I opened this app.

Finally, I see a friend’s poem about how defeated he feels trying to grow his business while the world is on fire. This one gets me the most riled. I'm tried of talented artists lamenting that they have to learn how to be entrepreneurs. Michelangelo risked prison and death to cut open cadavers to learn anatomy. We can learn how to write an email funnel.

It has been 5 minutes since I opened this app.

Because of this phone, I've been able to see through the eyes of:

1. 80k+ people who are disgusted by this country
2. a techno-capitalist who thinks this is the greatest country in history
3. an AI video of a reality tv star president waving to fireworks
4. an artist face-painting smiling children
5. an artist with almost a million followers lamenting late-stage capitalism from his phone

Welcome to the Schizophrenic Renaissance.

I’ve had my fill.

I close the app and open a fresh page to type in (I use Notion).

I begin to create.

Creativity is my religion. Creative insight is my immaculate conception. Great ideas are not something I make, they are something I receive. The creative act is not creation as much as it is a stewarding.

I create like a farmer. I wake up early. I feed my parts and water my interior plants. It’s a prayer. It looks like 3 to 4 hours of focus. My phone does not exist. All push notifications on my computer are disabled. There are no tabs or browsers. Just this page, this keyboard, and my fingers.

I write, not knowing what I will say, but knowing what it feels like to find the place where I move from writing to being written. We’re taught to call it flow. The more spiritually audacious call it channeling. When it is real, it is the same thing.

Everyday, I write until I am being written.

When the 3-hour timer dings, I open the zoom call I’ve been on. Dozens of other artists from across the world are here too. We’ve all just spent the last 3 hours focused. I listen to a few people share what it was like for them to spend 3 hours with themselves, without distraction. I often cry a tear or two at the space we’ve created here. A place for people trying to wake up.

The call ends and I feel the gravitational pull to find my phone, to cycle through the apps I am addicted to checking for a quick hit of engineered dopamine.

Instead, I choose to extend the pocket of grace. I step outside. I notice the vibrancy of the leaves that have sat drenched with rain the last few days. I look out at the horizon and see the skyline of Austin. Each building a confession of humanity’s ability to draw rock, ore, and dirt from the earth and transform it into steel, glass, and cable.

Cities are the most complex technology humanity has ever stewarded. Once or twice a year I get drunk with friends downtown. While drunk, I cannot help but be seized in awe that cities work. My aspirations and petty plans of control melt away as I try to comprehend the immense complexity that is a modern city. The sewage tunnels, the electrical lines, the blaring ambulances, and the traffic lights. The thousands of tonnes of concrete. And the human lives.

Hundreds of thousands of god shards, constructed identities covering infinite fractal unconscious immensities, packed into a few square miles. Couples laughing on first dates as they walk past the homeless man yelling at God. Entrepreneurs grinding their teeth on stimulants on one floor while couples convulse in orgasmic bliss on another.

Somehow it all works. We have gotten so accustomed to the mountain of miracles required for an ‘ordinary day’ that we can convince ourselves that this is all a meaningless accident.

This might be our greatest artistic feat as a species; that we can convince ourselves that this is random meaningless, and that we are not the creators painting the canvas of our personal dramas of helplessness.

I’m starting to get bit by mosquitoes. It’s time to go inside. The moment I get into my AC’d home, the gravitational pull to the phone rises again.

Thankfully, I have systems. I set a timer for 20 minutes. I step back into the schizophrenic renaissance consciously. I enjoy stepping into the minds of the few hundred people I have chosen to follow. This black box allows me to see as they see, feel as they feel, and dream as they dream.

The timer goes off sooner than I expect. I put the phone down. I go back to my desk and look at the list of things I want to do today. The list is never more than 5 actions. I’m excited to use the magic of the computer to accomplish these tasks. Doing these tasks is to keep my word to myself.

This Schizophrenic Renaissance has allowed me to build a life as a writer without needing an agent or publisher. It has allowed me an PhD level education without the debt. It has allowed me an income without muzzling my mouth with the fake corporate double-speak salaried jobs often require.

I am grateful, and I expose myself to the Schizophrenic Renaissance to help others wake up from being consumed by it, and showing them that they can create whatever they dream of with it.

It begins with reclaiming your focus, and remembering the dream you came here to fulfill.

Reclaiming and remember is a daily act.

Good luck.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​Made In Heights - Panther​

Dharma Artist I Discovered This Week

Shout out to my friend Jonny Miller for sharing this mini-documentary with me about Fred Mitouer, Ph.D. The video is 20 minutes long and it was the most refreshing thing I've watched on a screen in the past week. Fred is an example of what is possible in this wyrd times. I look forward to workin with him soon.

Quote I'm Enjoying

"The great thing in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy...To do this, we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work."
-William James

Shower Thought:

How would my life change if I faced my addiction to my phone? What would happen if I counted how many times I opened my phone each day? What would my life look like if every time I opened my phone, I did so consciously, and I used it to help feed the dream I have for my life?