Should I unplug from social media during my roadtrip? I’m highly tempted to want to post stories of the places I am and have seen.

That temptation—to paint the stories of where you’ve been—isn’t at odds with unplugging. In fact, it’s a sign that unplugging could serve that impulse more deeply.

Here’s how to frame it:

🔻

If You Stay Plugged In…

You’ll likely:

• Document quickly but shallowly, driven by the need to post or “capture.”

• See the trip partially through the lens of a screen.

• Be subtly shaped by how others might interpret your experience.

• Feel pressure to produce shareable content instead of deeply resonant art.

🔺

If You Unplug…

You allow yourself to:

• Be fully inside the experience—the textures, sounds, light, emotion.

• Gather raw, authentic visual memory and emotional impressions.

• Let each place imprint itself on you rather than being mediated by a feed.

• Delay gratification in service of creating timeless work later—paintings that remember what the place felt like, not just what it looked like.

🌄

A Middle Way (Highly Recommended)

You could unplug from Instagram and daily phone use, but still:

• Photograph or sketch places with intention (in airplane mode, no editing).

• Journal daily—what you felt, heard, thought.

• Make mini on-site studies, then transform them later in the studio.

• Collect materials (soil, branches, detritus, notes) as physical memory.

This way, you’re not documenting to be seen—you’re archiving for your future self and your daughter, who will one day hold these artworks and their origin stories.