While I won’t bring it up at all in the body text, this is absolutely an Arctic Monkeys reference

Summer in Perth is too hot for cycling. This is an objective truth that holds true, at the very least, for me – but I am sure at least a few others would agree. For that reason, this story kicks off around March, when I could finally bring myself to start riding my bike to work again.
The parking lot is for city buses. Long bays, a simple loop, I haven’t done any research to know if it historically saw more use, or whether it is simply a holding area. At most I’ve seen two, maybe three buses here at once, but my sample size is handful of weekday mornings and evenings. The thing that really stood out for me was The Car.

The above photo was not taken the first time I saw this car parked here on its own, and I probably had to wait a week or two after that sighting to catch it again and capture the moment. I’m not particularly spontaneous – neither thought of stopping in the first place, or turning around and doubling back did not come to mind immediately. In any case the visual stuck with me. Early on I was unsure if this was a unique moment that would only persist in my memory. Instead, I was beginning a journey that would become a thematic powerhouse in my Instagram Stories for the year.

I’m going to keep this on theme, but just know that many other stories followed the “The X” aesthetic.

13 storied successes. A bonus Bus picture was taken one morning, but it was not uploaded immediately and was superseded in the afternoon. It was only after a longer run of seeing empty lots, or multiple buses (neither valid options for posting according to the arbitrary ruleset I had created) that I decided to start capturing the “misses”. These were not posted, but I thought they would make for a good collage like the one above, with maybe one success in the middle.

My favourite part of collaging this together is the stark contrasts that come out of the same subject at different times of the day/year

I had at least three or four friends directly engage with this project, which is obviously a paltry number, but it is also a staggering number when placed against the average engagement in this day and age. I also want to be clear that I am not after “engagement” (though I have a morbid curiosity that the word might be a trigger for SEO engagement). First and foremost I want to do things for myself, publicity is simply accountability – an end goal and a reason to put some effort in. Case-in-point: I took the “empty lot” photos under the guise that I would do a “bonus post” and here we are. Without publishing I just have photos on my phone and thoughts in my head (and leaving thoughts in your head is not as productive as squeezing some coherant sentences out of them). But I digress. What I am trying to say is: Firstly, hello to anyone that commented on any of these stories and is now reading this, and; Second, any interaction beyond a react or a meme-share is healthy for us as people and as a society.

The second healthy-unhealthy game I realised I was playing is that I had created for myself an analogue random-chance dopamine routine. This is (supposedly) the same psychology that goes into doomscrolling and app use and lootboxes, where finding something good within sets of random chance is way more addictive than just getting what we want every time we hit the “button”. I’ve become particularly jaded with doomscrolling and the general trajectory that tech is taking recently, so it is weird to be lauding myself for enjoying the same hack, but if companies are going to weaponise psychology for profit I think I get a pass for riding my bike.

We are back in the middle of summer at the prime time for introspection and resolution (hence the blog post of prose-turned-rambling). I, for one, am not going to force myself to ride my bike on days that are miserably hot just because I ate some big meals in the last two weeks. But I am really trying to wind down my use of gamified “social media” (it feels there is barely anything social about it). Particularly when dictionary companies have declared “Slop” and “Rage-Bait” as their words-of-the-year, it feels ever more important to ensure that we are actually engaging with each other. For myself, I am hopeful that removing apps/tech/doomscrolling, where reasonable, will give me back time to interact with actual art (high effort content rather than low effort content – books, films, visual art, etc.). Do I consider this series on “The Car” to be “actual art” or “high effort”? No. At least, not against my own barometer for the stuff. That said, compared to most of the content out there this year, maybe I should think more highly of myself.

Happy 2025, and all the best as we tread/stumble/barrel-on into the future

It is difficult to quantify the value of the internet on a person-to-person basis. Previous communication tools had either a material value to them (newspapers, mail) or a cost associated with use (phones, pagers, voicemail). While the internet initially fits into the second category its scope, development, and the way we use it has far exceeded the cost-associations that previous technologies have always had. And, to be fair, sending 1’s and 0’s down a network of tubes is insanely low in cost, but the infrastructure around those tubes is easily forgotten. I’m not doing any research here but even to pay for this WordPress blog to go “live” (and for me to get a domain name with it) will apparently cost me $60AUD for the first year, but before I commit to that I’m allowed to build, edit, and write on the website for free. The price tag does set a good precedent though: would you pay $5/month for Facebook?

Communication is a part of human nature, and the internet has made reaching people easier than ever. But the free services we have become dependent on aren’t simply good-willed; they abide by the profit margins they can generate, and their tactics for doing so are becoming more egregious.

All of this is to say, I’m spending too much time on things that give the illusion of connecting. “Services” that have no interest in my wellbeing, but are instead looking to maximise my time spent on them (as metrics for investors or stakeholders) and, if possible, generate income out of me, whether that’s through my own wallet or the ads they can serve (a function that values the time I’m on the service and, thus, my time spent viewing ads).

The internet is a fantastic tool for communication, when communication is at the core of what we are doing with it. The tool, the internet, is not the problem, but I personally need to distance myself from the systems that distract and disconnect. I’m not certain if I will remove myself entirely, but I think finding, and paying for, my own corner of the internet is a step towards a communication platform I can comfortably retain control over. I do not expect everyone, or even anyone, to follow me, but I look forward to going outside or actually achieving things a bit more¹, even if it means I miss out on an event invitation or two.

TL;DR: Welcome to my website. I’m hoping it will be a place for me to freely express myself as well as a place where people can still find me on the internet.

1. This might imply that I’m blaming social media for my own shortcomings and, in a way, I am. That said I think I’ve already established that they use predatory psychological practices to “engage” users (regardless of how engaged my brain might feel), and so removing myself from that system should be healthier in and of itself.