The Great Crash Out of 2025

Or, where the f**k have you been, Dave?

Is this the last art work I’ll ever make?

It’s been six months since I wrote anything on Substack, or shared anything to my list, and I will not apologize, but can I share with you the profound internal journey I’ve been on since August of 2025?

Short back story for anyone who might have joined here in the last several months only to find me absent—back in July, I took a scheduled month off so that I could spend time with my family during summer, mostly to drive my kid around from one activity to another several times a day (not even joking). Then August arrived, I started to write, but then was dealt a devastating crisis of conscience.

I won’t go to deep into it, but Substack has a hate problem, and I have a problem with that. I didn’t feel right about running a paid membership where some of the fees went to a company that allows for some of the hateful content allowed on this platform. Every time I had an inkling to come back, I remembered why I left and couldn’t bring myself back to it.

At the same time, I also checked out of every single creative project I was into. No art, no graphic design, no zines, no YouTube videos; absolutely zero creative output for months—again, with no apologies. It has been both terrible and freeing at the same time.

It’s kind of wild, but I have almost no interest in making art. I cannot explain it, because I haven’t experienced this level of disassociation from creative work in decades.

Am I done as an artist?

The things I was making felt performative at best. I made things because the hamster needs to run on the wheel while the audience watches, but I needed a break.

Even as I write this, I don’t know when I’ll ever make another piece of art again. I’m sure I will, but I don’t see it in my immediate future, which is such a foreign concept. Making has always been my life, but did I spend all my creative capital? Is my well dry?

Of course not.

A few months back, I was wallowing in my self-pity on a random Sunday evening, spending my time scrolling through on Instagram (a place I also hadn’t touched in months), filtering between political distress calls and heartfelt music-oriented content. The social discourse made me sad, but the music kept me afloat. I started sharing the ones I loved to my stories and I couldn’t stop. Before I knew it, I had dozens of stories posted, mostly music with some social commentary mixed in for spice, and I enjoyed the moment.

The next day, I did more of the same, sharing music with anyone who needed an uplift, and the results were obvious. People started reaching back to me with their thoughts about some of the things I shared. It was nice to reconnect with people and help connect them to the music artists that I found interesting.

This process helped heal me, and I hope it helped heal others, but more importantly, it showed me that there is no other art form that connects people like music. There isn’t a painting in the world that instantly connect people from all walks of life like Bohemian Rhapsody, Black Hole Sun, or Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah.

Art, film, writing can touch our hearts, but they don’t have the same power to transport us back to a time and place in our lives like music, at least not on the same level.

No, I’m not starting a band

I cannot sing or play instruments, and I have no desire to hang out in bars that smell of sweat and stale beer. I’m more inclined of opening a record store than I am of starting a band, but I have recently found a renewed connection to music appreciation that I haven’t felt since streaming became a thing.

I took my son to a record store recently, his first time ever being in one. I don’t own a record player right now, but there’s just something special about flipping through new and used LPs that feels like home. My kid was in awe—the first time he’d seen the work of his favorite artists in physical form. Watching him, I had this overwhelming feeling of pride, as if I leveled up as a father. I’d done right by my son bringing him to this place, and it’s now something we can do together with mutual respect.

But what the hell does any of this have to do with what I’m doing now?

What I’ve come to realize about the last six months is how much I’ve missed a simpler, less digitally connected life. I want to listen to vinyl records all the way through.

I want to take pictures using an actual camera instead of my phone, and care less about sharing them on Instagram.

I want shop for vintage clothing for no other reason than to find pieces that remind me of how cool it was to be alive when I was young.

I want to sit in a coffee shop with cool music while I journal in a notebook instead of work on my laptop

I want nostalgia with gratitude and to remember to disconnect more often to enjoy the life in front of me.

And I want to design a brand that embodies all of that. In fact, I already have, but that’s a story for next time.

It’s good to be back. I hope you stick around despite my overdue emergence from the depths of obscurity.