How to Do Nothing
A month off social media & some lessons from Jenny Odell
A little diary comic today as I make my way through Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing.
Today actually marks a month since I deleted the holy trifecta of social media (Instagram, TikTok and Twitter) off my phone! I found that I was getting so sucked into it and was wasting hours of my day scrolling through pointless noise.
“I am concerned about the effects of current social media on expression—including the right not to express oneself—and its deliberately addictive features. But the villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
I actually did this diary comic a couple months ago when I first started Jenny’s book. I abandoned the book for a few months because I got too busy but while looking for some things I could update this Substack with, I came across this comic and book again. Looking through all my notes I took on the first couple of pages, I realized how much of it still resonated with me.
Since I’ve deleted everything off my phone, I’ve in general felt a lot less “anxiety, envy and distraction.” Kind of wild that something designed to suck the life out of us makes me feel bad huh?
Anyways, this diary comic actually started because I was being extremely precious with a sketchbook of mine and I realized that I wanted each page to look beautiful simply so I could share the images on social media. I wasn’t making it for me, but for this mysterious audience inhabiting the world wide web. What a horrible way to approach making art.
In other news, I had my first acupuncture appointment yesterday! I got eight needles stuck in my poor drawing arm and one needle in my ear!
I think my arm feels a litttttle bit looser but it’s still painful. Going back for another appointment next week and hoping that with a couple sessions we can get this old gal up and running again.
This is the last week I am grinding for this piggy picture book I am working on. The interior art is due Friday and it’s just the last little bits to edit then I’ll send that baby off. Okay, there’s still a cover to do but hopefully that won’t take too much time… Next month will be entirely dedicated to promoting my author/illustrator debut book Oh, Olive!
On the horizon is an in person launch event featuring berets and cupcakes, another window display, and multiple book festivals! Ah!
Also a small reminder, if you preorder my book through any bookstore and forward your receipt to liantomato@gmail.com, you’ll get a FREE YEAR ACCESS to PAID POSTS!
Many wonderful and beautiful people have already jumped on this train and now they’re apart of the Cool Kids Club! It’s way more cost effective to pre-order my book for $20 vs the $50 annual subscription to the newsletter.
If you want some freebies with the book, you can order through the links before, or just order from your favorite local bookstore!
Oh man, I wish I felt brave enough to delete these things off my phone permanently. It's the author platform part that scares me. We have such little ability to control the promotional/marketing efforts of our careers and social media feels like one place where I can at least be trying. But also it's not effective anyway, really? Still not sure what the answers are.
Love this diary comic! These thoughts and quotes are definitely things I needed to read right now. Being on social media/on my phone feels like static noise and a fog that weighs heavily and it's been really overwhelming. Gonna have to go try reading How to Do Nothing now :O