X MARKS THE SPOT

Introduction to X (formerly Twitter) (add Seth Godin too as the experience because actually he sort of writes his books from his blog so that is relevant)
X stood out for its social proof and value component—it’s more accountable than other platforms. It feels like the epicenter for discussions among the new media minds, where serious conversations take place. Before this, I hadn’t even used X, the last time I think was developing mebeta back around 2010? Though I always sensed its importance. The timing and preparation just hadn’t aligned to make the opportunity obvious until now.

The social accountability aspect of X was crucial for me—it forced me to "buck up" and put myself out there without backing down. It was intimidating, exposing myself not just through my political leanings but also through whatever else I planned to share. Health tips? Maybe. But the point was stepping into the arena and owning my voice.

Quits Takes Root: A Beginning with No End

I had deliberately set my mind on solving this problem: creating a moniker that was distinct and completely separate from my name, yet somehow carried its essence, its sound. The name actually came to me in a dream. That was rare for me—ideas in dreams were never this clear before. I remember waking up and immediately telling my roommate, David Dargus, just to "lock it in" historically. Chris and Quits—it was the closest I could get. The name resonated deeply, capturing both my artistic journey and personal struggles. A lot of my past has been defined by quitting—jobs, relationships, even identities. But what intrigued me was flipping the narrative. Quitting is often painted as failure—“don’t quit,” “never quit”—but what if quitting is a skill? What if it’s about cutting ties with things that no longer serve you?

TIKTOK: A few years ago, I started a TikTok account called Quits Official.
- Flat Earth Livestreams - The Final Era for my conspiracy talk phase
- Post COVID, got into Canadian politics. Got into Pierre Poilievre when he was on the rise. Posted a lot about him. Racked up _ views and subscribers. Then he ran for prime minister and at that time I had already quit the channel.
- This was when I gave up on Quits as a concept. I wrestled with the idea because I actually went all in on it, probably a bit too soon where it was my email and such. And at the time I was working and just the association with "quits" and the job, I even had someone at an employer think I was quitting because quits was in my email. I did not renew quitsofficial.com, so lost access to the email address. Unfortunately I couldn't change my Tiktok email address either for some reason, so as a result the channel became a sort of lost cause thinking I'd eventually lose it anyway because at some point if something happens I will not be able to verify it.

QUITS CONCEPTUALLY: I began to embrace quitting as a powerful act, whether it was walking away from toxic habits, like smoking and alcohol, or shedding roles that didn’t fit. It was about reclaiming the narrative and finding strength in knowing when to let go.

Finding My Voice with ChatGPT (AND READING, SO THE LITERAL COMPONENT IS I FINALLY PICKED UP THE BOOK I MEANT TO READ / I WAS MEANT TO READ SONG OF SIGNIFICANCE / GROUNDED SPIIRITUALITY)

This platform, with its unique structure and audience, became the forge that shaped my resolve, like steel under fire. Over the weekend, I posted a few things, testing the waters. The first was a translation of an excerpt from Jeff Brown's Grounded Spirituality, which I worked on with the help of ChatGPT. Together, we edited two pages down into a concise and stylistic interpretation.

Shaping My Expression
That process was eye-opening. ChatGPT became a brainstorming partner, helping me see how I could take Jeff’s words and reshape them into something personal, even putting them into the first person to "convert" the message into my own. This step was a game-changer. For the longest time, I’d been struggling to find my own voice, especially after listening to Jeff speak or reading his work and thinking, How the hell can I talk like that?

The Photographic Reboot
I paired the quote with a photo of myself—the first piece of original art I’d created in ages. It felt deeply synchronistic, as the quote itself was about showing up authentically, and during the editing process, I realized I could take that message and align it with something equally significant: the act of publishing a photograph of me on the internet. Back in my photographic and graphic art days, I had developed a style I loved—high-contrast, dark-toned photos of my face. They served a dual purpose: hiding imperfections and presenting a version of me that felt bad ass. But I had let that practice fade without an active social media life, and consequently my self image quietly deteriorated over time. I noticed a sharp improvement in my self image over the weekend just by this act alone. I hadn’t done that in years, and diving back into it felt like a reawakening.

That’s why I’ve been so focused on solidifying a conceptual identity—an anchor I wouldn’t delete or discard this time. This is the essence of Quits: to quit what no longer serves me, but to never quit quitting—and, most importantly, to not quit on myself this time.

The Pattern of Abandonment
Back then, I was engaged in creating and sharing online, but only in bursts. I’d throw myself into a concept, like an old project of mine called mebeta, which was a digital identity I’d crafted. I’d go all in—designing the website, creating the content (the fun and exhilarating part that I truly love)—but it always felt disconnected. I was posting my art, sure, but it wasn’t tied to anything meaningful. There was no deeper purpose anchoring the work.

Abandoning Mebeta and Garbage Media
I quit mebeta because I didn’t want to be “beta.” That’s the thing about my self-worth and how it shaped the concepts I chose. Mebeta was initially developed as the “beta version” of myself, a work-in-progress from a developer’s perspective. But back then, I was wrestling with this societal narrative about being "beta" versus "alpha"—a passive, quiet, second-place sort of person. Even though mebeta wasn’t about that, the negative connotation crept in and soured the whole idea for me. So, I dropped it.

The same thing happened with Garbage Media, a podcast and YouTube channel I started. It was meant to be a playful critique of media culture as a junk pile. But again, that negative framing—the “garbage” association—ultimately weighed it down. After years of these cycles, I started to worry. Ten years of conceptualizing, creating, and then abandoning projects made me question if I’d ever stick with something long enough to see it through.

The Rebirth of Quits
That’s why Quits was so perfect. I’ll admit, I abandoned it for about a year, but then it came back with a vengeance. I realized exactly what I’m explaining now: the negative association wasn’t a flaw—it was the point. It bugged me because, yes, I quit things too much. But this time, I shouldn’t give up. The whole concept of Quits is flipping that narrative on its head, turning something that used to shame me into something empowering.

Creative Process and Overcoming Doubt
This speaks to the creative process. I’ve always been good at turning ideas over and over, dissecting them from every angle. But too often, I’d get stuck on the negative parts, feel the shame creep in, and let it kill the project. Not this time. This time, it feels too perfect. I don’t even fully know what Quits will become, but that’s okay.

Initially, I thought it might be a channel for simple how-to videos—“how to quit drinking,” for example. But that felt too niche, like those hyper-focused content channels. That tension—whether to keep it niche or let it be a broad, catch-all container—is still something I’m working through. Doing the project based niche sites didn't work with me as an artist longing to tell my story, it would just interrupt that process. It wasn’t the path I wanted to take, even though I saw their value. I just didn’t have the discipline or energy to fully commit to something that didn’t feel authentically me. That’s what this whole journey has been about: making myself. But what I do know is that Quits feels expansive enough to hold all the ideas I’ve been circling around for years. It’s not about quitting this time. It’s about staying with it.

Integration of Voice and Ideas
Every project I started and abandoned was part of a bigger process of figuring out how to integrate who I am with what I create. It wasn’t enough to focus on “other stuff.” I needed to build something that reflected me—my voice, my experiences, and my vision. Quits became the perfect vessel for that. It’s not just a project; it’s a declaration of who I am and who I’m becoming. I couldn’t do anything else until I tackled this one thing: a self-centered, self-actualizing project.

Jeff Brown’s Influence
It wasn’t about just creating for the sake of creating. I had to bring myself into this process first. Everything else felt secondary until I could carve out a space that was genuinely aligned with who I was. The realization that the only way forward was to start with me. Jeff Brown's work in this regard helped me finally get over this. I could apply it directly to my creative path.

That lack of connection was the missing piece, the part I desperately needed. Enter Jeff Brown. His focus on self-actualization and a soul-centered approach helped me refine my perspective. It was like a eureka moment—a realization that what I’d been missing all along was this intrinsic, purposeful integration. Suddenly, it all made sense. Creating couldn’t just be about aesthetics or bursts of inspiration

Writers Block
In the Writers Block workshop, I learned a crucial lesson: the point of writing is simply to write. The skill was already there within me; I just needed the right medium, which turned out to be generative AI. The key takeaway from the workshop was to stop overthinking and just write—everything else will come as you go.

However, it wasn’t until this past weekend that I was able to truly act on that realization. The process of writing was unlocked for me. I was no longer waiting for the "perfect" words or the "perfect" moment. Once I started, things began to flow naturally. Writing became less about trying to force something and more about capturing what was happening in real time. It felt like everything I’d meant to write about, all those past thoughts and experiences, were finally making sense because they were coming up in the process.

I also created a post quote from my fictional book during this weekend, which was a catalyst. It helped me start shaping the narrative and see where things could go. What’s powerful is that I can use social media as a feedback loop, sharing snippets and refining them in real-time. It’s where I can tinker with my words, tailoring them for hours until they sound just right. This act of refining is what happens after the draft is done, but even the drafts themselves are alive in these sections. Writing is no longer a distant, idealized process—it’s happening now, and this is how it moves forward.

Novellian Origin Story
Which gets into the story itself that I'm writing now, which is the book I always knew I had to write but again was not progressing AT ALL ON.

Jeff Brown -> Facebook -> Instagram -> Novellian
1st post to The Novellian was a quote excerpt and photo replicated from what I did on X except this time it was not a quote from someone elses book it was a fictional quote from my own book that I finally got to writing.

A few months back I came up with the idea of "The Novellian" and again it sort of worked it's way, and I happened to name my instagram channel "The Novellian" and this weekend BECAUSE I did the posts with X and the graphics and BECAUSE Jeff Brown was on Facebook which was the only reason I used Facebook to reconnect with him through and tap into that river of language he wrote about. So in a way I was seeing what he was doing and then I applied it to my own work.

So I wasn't sold on what the novellian was, but since all this happened I opened an instagram account, (had the facebook so I did that yesterday) and since I had the edited photos I could do that, and simply pairing the photo with the caption, which happened to be the first post of The Novellian project on Instagram WHICH WAS>.... AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK THAT I'M FINALLY WRITING. You see how this was all inspired? So then I was like well that settles that then, The Novellian is the book I've been meaning to write for (insert huge length of time here) and what is that, "meaning to write" like I've just been going over this part of my life over and over again that beginning phase that I never really got to express. (Getting back to the stuff about my internet advertising agency etc) like I'd always come back to all this material. I had the opportunity to speed run through it with a therapist (the only time I've gone) and she exclaimed wow, and I was like RIGHT? I always thought that story IN ITSELF would be worthy of a movie, or a book or SOMETHING. And yes exactly, so The Novellian is this idea of an autobiography mixed with a novelization. I'm thinking it could be branded as the great canadian novel. But not a novel. The Novellian thing back to that a bit also the Orwellian thing that's how I came up with the idea. In this case I truly was just brainstorming ideas, not necessarily for a book, I didn't know what at the time I think I was just trying to come up with another new, unique concept "for something". I think maybe even a production company I was thinking of names for that because that's been this thing I thought might be a business I could start. So yeah this literate thing kept popping up. I was taking a writers block workshop at the time. The guy who ran it is a writer named Jacob Duarte, anyway the course was great, he actually made "The Beaverton" news/blog and TV show. I remember this had something to do with it, like something I noticed .. So I was coming up with ideas for something "new" aka "novel" which I do believe is how I did it.. I think I even did it via ChatGPT so we could look it up when and what I did.. And then I sorta just tacked on the ellian at the end like orwellian, and even though I wasn't totally sold on it or anything, I did check it out online and it's always a good sign when there's not much out there that's called that.