This past week has been rough. It’s been tough to be online lately. There’s an overwhelming, dreadful feeling that washes over me whenever I unlock my Mac or iPhone. A heavy sigh, then, “What now?”

It’s always something. There’s always something. Someone’s always up to something. And it’s not good. It never is. And it won’t be ever again. It’s not so much that everything suddenly broke. It’s more like a bookshelf crashed into another bookshelf. Every shelf brings with it a hundred books. Each one is not only damaged by the fall, but contributes to the destruction of the next hundred books. One after another.

It’d be too simplistic to merely call this “depression.” And I don’t think I’m particularly depressed. I just think—in many ways—I’ve run out of patience. I don’t have patience for people who can’t determine right from wrong. I don’t have patience for any legal or justice system. I don’t have any patience left for war and genocide. I’m fresh out of it.

But that’s not all. I don’t have an excess of energy. I have a finite supply every day. If one of those things catches me early enough in the day, I could burn through all the energy I have before lunchtime. I could find myself in the afternoon struggling to do what I actually wanted to do that day. And the answer to that is never to be keeping up with every terrible thing.

And time. Time is almost all we have in the world. It’s our only resource. I can’t really do more than one thing at a time. I can’t divide my attention between two things. One will always suffer, while the other succeeds.

I don’t think the social media likes I received ever made me joyful. I don’t believe participants in online arguments have ever left those conversations happy. I doubt the dopamine was ever worth the hours spent to extract it. The comments. They’ve almost never been valuable. In the history of online comments, from forums to YouTube, to every social network humans have cobbled together, Internet comments have always been among the lowest-quality content available.

I can spend an hour watching a narrative TV show. I can spend an hour talking with a friend. I can spend many, many hours poring over art.

We are what we eat. If I spend my time consuming low-quality, low-effort things on the web, I will not only have wasted my time, I will have not gained any inspiration. Movies, TV shows, theatre, music, video games, paintings, and architecture inspire me and make me want to draw. Those things give me life. When I see the wonderful things humans are capable of, it makes me know how much I am capable of.

But when I see the terrible, stupid, meaningless drivel? I feel lifeless. Suddenly there’s nothing interesting to do or make. When I read depressing news, I don’t feel empowered; I feel defeated. I’m not inspired by tragic events. I can only be angry and sad, and while I know some great art has come from those feelings, it is not what motivates me.

We all have a chance to do so much more than doomscroll into eternity. We all have the option to reply kindly and give praise. We can all be grateful and thankful and humble. And it costs close to nothing. The reverse costs so much more.

After speaking with a friend at lunch today, I was reminded of how many people had written an email to tell me that I had inspired them. That something I’ve made or said inspired them to do something they care about. People made their own websites. They made an icon. Whatever it was, I realized I had the power to provide exactly the same thing I take from the world. And I can only do that if I sit down and use the time I have to make what I know to be good.

Maybe it’s social media that’s getting in the way. It’s demanding of my time and my energy. It distracts me. It takes me away from making. I can’t stop bad things from happening. I can’t stop people from picking fights on the Internet. I can’t stop unwanted replies. I can’t stop anything. The best I can do is make good things. And that’s what I want to do. It’s what I’m best at, and I want to maximize the amount of time I’m able to spend doing it.

Walking home from lunch, I was thinking about how this website is the thing I get to control. It’s the thing I get to build for myself. And I pictured this charmingly chunky logo with colors that feel like they came from a 90s elementary school teacher’s sweater. And the moment I finished it, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it: I was going to relieve myself from my social media accounts and give them to my website.

If I’m going to use social media, I want it to be in service of my website. I want to link to my website as much as possible because I want whatever I make to live here. I want my social media accounts to be LMNT, not Louie. I don’t want to post things I wouldn’t want to post to LMNT. If it’s not for my website, then it’s not for social media.

Maybe, hopefully, that one change will free me from spending so much time on social media, absolve myself from replies, and give myself the time to focus on the things I actually like to do. I want to make icons. I want to make playing cards and fonts. I want to experience things that inspire me to make those things. And I think this is the way.

I have already written more this year than ever before. I have already made more icons this year than ever before. This is not work to me. This is fun. Doing this stuff is what I wish I could do 100% of the time. If I give myself that time back, I know I can do even more.

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