Remem­ber MySpace? I do, if only vague­ly. I was a hold­out, although I couldn’t real­ly say why. After months (years?) of friends say­ing how it was indis­pens­able for pro­mo­tion and net­work­ing, and with me hav­ing none of those skills, I final­ly signed up right around the time every­one start­ed mov­ing to Face­book. I was a Face­book hold­out until all my friends said how indis­pens­able it was for net­work­ing and pro­mo­tion, and with me hav­ing none of those skills I final­ly signed up. The same with Twit­ter, and Insta­gram, until even­tu­al­ly I set­tled into a hap­py men­tal sta­sis with them all and used them to pro­mote, and net­work, and share good things, and stay in touch with fam­i­ly, and recon­nect with old friends, and all was well until I real­ized what a mis­er­able per­son I was becoming.

I real­ize not being on any social media these days is akin to being That Guy who’s ​“nev­er even OWNED a TV,” but veg­ging out on the Great British Bake Off for an hour might bum me out about my sog­gy pie crusts, at worst. Here’s a small list of things about social media that crush my heart: 

• The feel­ing when I see oth­ers doing projects I wish I was doing 
• The way I engage with oth­ers I don’t agree with 
• The amount of time that flies by while I’m trick­ing myself into think­ing I’m mak­ing mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions with oth­er people 
• Watch­ing human­i­ty slow­ly evolve into a hive mind of instant opinion 
• The feel­ing I get with try­ing to pro­mote any­thing I’m doing artistically 
• Hand­ing over my con­tent and per­son­al infor­ma­tion to advertisers 
• The com­pul­sion I feel when it’s available 
• I just hate it 

But I get it! Social media is the world today. It’s how you are prob­a­bly check­ing in with every­one you know, how you get your news, how you tell peo­ple what you’re doing. My options for doing so with­out it are a) keep­ing this web­site updat­ed, and b) keep­ing peo­ple updat­ed per­son­al­ly, both of which I am com­plete­ly ter­ri­ble at. All that said! I’ve been run­ning into peo­ple I haven’t seen for a few months and they’ve all been ask­ing, ​“where have you been?” So here’s where I’ve been. 

I played music — I shared a lot of stage time, plus a healthy amount of stu­dio time, with the Twi­light Hours, Chris Koza, Erik Kosk­i­nen, Dylan Hicks, and more. A few inter­est­ing out­liers like pre­tend­ing to be Tom­my Lee with Jere­my Ylvisaker’s Möt­ley Crüe trib­ute band (!) and a night back­ing up San­dra Bern­hard (!!!).

I’ve had some projects fiz­zle (more than I care to admit) and joined a few oth­ers, one of the more fun being John Munson’s brain­child of 60s/​70s organ funk, the Fra­grants. I’ve been steadi­ly pluck­ing away at new music, although if any of it hits the air­waves before the end of the year it’ll be a small miracle. 

I’ve acquired some new, inspir­ing gear — I’ve had more fun play­ing my 70s clear Vistal­ites equipped with trig­gers and effects than I’ve had in a while, and I’m the proud new own­er of an Able­ton Push which lets me play my favorite soft­ware like a musi­cal instru­ment that can do almost any­thing I want it to. 

More impor­tant­ly, though, I’ve acquired new fam­i­ly. My wife, five-year-old son, and I jour­neyed off to Kolkata, India to meet and bring home with us our new daugh­ter, two-year-old Arad­hya. We’ve been deep in the adop­tion path for almost two years, and the joys of this beau­ti­ful, spir­it­ed, and shin­ing girl in our life far out­weigh any of the chal­lenges we’ve faced in our process.

Turns out not steadi­ly pub­lish­ing my life is a slight­ly health­i­er way to live it. Let’s stay in touch, us, okay?