When I've shorn my garments in word and image, posting links and brief excerpts of recent recollections of old dreams seems so translucent by comparison. Anyhow - I was asked by Medium.com to write an essay about a word that defined 2017 for me, and I chose sovereignty.
They partnered me with a richly illustrated drawing of that word by Sunday Buro. From the American bunting, an eagle with its eyes bound, and my teaser bio reading: "An Unsettling Struggle for Sovereignty: Cannabis entrepreneur Justin Hall reflects on the sacrifices we make for the illusion of freedom." you would think my Sovereignty piece is about America's war on drugs. But it's much more about literally wrestling with my daughter.
It's the first time I've written an "Article" in a good long while and I was flattered to be asked and excited to have a chance to fire up my content production machine and share something again. I believe the article is behind a "paywall" which means the content is not visible unless you participate in the publication (Medium.com)'s efforts to sustain itself financially.
I have mixed feelings about the whole thing - I have become more ambivalent about public sharing. I dwelled in "public sharing" for 18 months up to 2016, before the shit got real weird. Of course at any moment we can look around and marvel at what humanity has made with what it has enabled; so why should we be surprised that social media might actually be a manipulative scourge? Let's find a newer mode of expression upon which we shall project our hopes for perpetual authenticity!
