I just finished a week of "summer camp" for creative technologists and makers. We had a final showcase yesterday which featured everything from moving stanchions, a vending machine full of interactive and mischievous trinkets, and light and sound installations that I watched little kids gape in wonder at. The week before that I hosted my first international event at Trust in Berlin1. And a few more weeks before that I showed off my first physical installation, a dedication to how much of us and our labor makes up the Internet in the least expected places, at Gray Area. A tweet about my computing-infused experiments went viral, I'm hosting a workshop on making tiny social networks with playhtml in a couple of weeks, and I start work on computing shrines funded by a small grant for the month. I pushed a big update to Gather and still hope to release it publicly to app stores by the end of the month.
From the outside, it looks like all the things are falling into place, right?
The backdrop for all these successes is the rejection from countless grants and fellowships I was riding on for making a living this year. Hours spent finding new ways to articulate how my work should matter. Page upon page of explaining why what I do is important, why anyone should care, why I am worthy. My inbox is full of countless emails that contain the words regret and unfortunately and we hope for your future success. This work grinds away at your soul.
I'm still not quite sure what my end game looks like. I must sound like a broken record to the people I love by now. I have theories about things that are both related to my overarching thesis of communal computing, or technology made by people for people, and can bring some amount of recurring sustainable revenue, but the absolute numbers are still in such little amounts as to be far from any living wage. I still feel subconscious about charging for my workshops or software products. I want the duality of allowing everyone to experience my work freely and accessibly while also being able to do what I love for a living. I worry about whether I can live up to my principles.
It's greedy of me to want everything to work out, to want to do it all without giving anything up. I tell myself I should be grateful for my blessings and how well things have gone already. Some say I have hit my limits, and I should figure out what to give up. But a deep part of me doesn't want to accept that. I want to be greedy. I want to want it all and get it all. I don't want to settle for any less than the fullness of my dreams. I don't feel able to let myself settle for less—perhaps, because for too long before this, I was constantly compromising and giving up what I wanted. I've tasted my dreams, and it's become my lifeline, for better or for worse.
If I had to sum up my identity in a word, it'd be dreamer. Everything I do is an attempt to reach towards my dreams. I dream, timidly at first, and then without restraint once warmed up. I wonder about queer scenarios, play with strange combinations, and hold opposing desires in equilibrium. Each of my projects starts from a dream of how the world could be different. First I dream, then I trace my fingers across its outlines. I test its structure and give it the chance to hold the weight of reality. That's how I make them real.
Dreaming is a powerful tool that cuts both ways. It can cut through doubt and open up possibilities in a dead end, or it can become a singular source from which all fulfillment must derive.
They say following your dreams will free you, but sometimes, it feels like it traps you in a new kind of prison. A cell of your own making that constantly asks for more from you—more courage, more endurance, more delusion. There's a burden that takes hold after the initial lightness of imagination. The more ambitious the dream, the heavier it feels. I can imagine Sisphysus as the first dreamer, forced to bear the dreams of the whole world. To make dreams real, you have to carry it with you day after day. You must shoulder the burden of hope in order to will it into being.
Dreaming demands you suspend your disbelief and the constraints of reality for a brief, vivid moment as you grasp at a lucid fulfillment of your imagination. You must adapt to living in the rift between these two realms, the harshness of reality and the mirage of paradise. Delusion and faith are two sides of the same coin. You need a little bit of both to dream.
Sometimes the pain is unbearable. There are days I wake up gripped by the pressure of "making it," the pressure of living up to all the expectations I have of myself, the comparisons with my rivals and peers. Other days I wake up with the lightness of being, free from any obligation. I work on questions that make me feel alive, pay attention to what matters to me, and spend time with people I love.
"Teilhard de Chardin was not talking about how to escape anguish, but about how to live with it."
from Long Life by Mary Oliver
I miss the lightness from the first few months of 2023, immediately after I left my full-time job. I want to return to that innocence, to the person who didn't yet know the suffering involved in the institution of dreaming2, the one who didn’t know the “game” that had to be played in order to make it in the world, the one who was overjoyed at every single person and every single comment that appeared in response to something they made or wrote. Someone who didn’t obsess over social media numbers like their life depended upon it, who didn’t beat themselves over other people’s opinions of them. The one who lived life wide-eyed and smiling, who fearlessly declared hope for the future and each other.
In my search for answers, I watch a talk Hank Green gave in 2014 called "Fuck your Dreams". He reminds us that we have no obligation to our former selves for what they wanted and implores us to think about the why behind what we want. He declares that "dreams should fuel us, not define us."
I want to believe him, but I dream with my whole being. I am inseparable from my dream. When I dream, I am saying I want, and by that, I mean I am. My dream, my desire, is an expression of my entire self. My dream points at not only at what I want but also who I am at this very moment. I am a person who wants X. I am a person who dreams about Y. I am someone who will be Z. A dream is an invocation of change. A plea for catastrophe. A prayer for salvation.
Maybe it's silly of me to tie myself so deeply to my hopes. That, or, it's the most human thing about me.
I want desperately to be original. I want desperately to be recognized by my community for my work. I want to make a living doing what I love. I understand how slim the odds are, rationally. I understand at a certain point, I can't control whether I make it at all. One day I might become someone who can be the bigger person and detach themselves from their dream. But today, I am a dreamer, so I will continue saying I want, I will, and I can, channeling all my faith and delusion towards an I am.
A preview of my latest internet art piece, AcknowledgeNET, showed at Gray Area last month. You can experience a small version of it online. If there are comments that you have come across, I would love to host them in the exhibit as well! See participation instructions on the website.
On my viral tweet, I'm making a small batch computing-infused pillows and other objects! Sign up for updates on preorders :)
The Tiny Awards nominations are out, and I have two websites that have been nominated as finalists in the multiplayer category: internet fridge and cursor watching. Go vote for your favorites! I voted for “One Minute Park” and “Internet Fridge.”
Speaking of internet fridge, it got picked up by the gaming crowd and got featured in Rock Paper Shotgun.
This dispatch was sent to 930 inboxes. My writing is always free and open, but I am independently funded and appreciate any support you can offer. Consider sharing this with a friend andsponsoring meif you have the means.
Thank you to the 24 people who supported my independent work with a monthly sponsorship last month: Jasmine, Raymond, Jacky, Sunil, Jess, Tim, Sarah, Jon, soft networks, Nikhil, Alejandro, Andy, Caro, Riley, Charles, Greg, James, Crystal, Dan, Jonah, Rachel, Gleb, and one anonymous donor.
This is beautiful and resonates well with a lot of dreamers who find themselves in similar places. Keep believing in the beauty of your dreams, Spencer. I'm rooting for us
You are a dreamer and a doer. The rare combination!
This is beautiful and resonates well with a lot of dreamers who find themselves in similar places. Keep believing in the beauty of your dreams, Spencer. I'm rooting for us