Hi, it's Adhiv, and I'm writing on the internet again. For a while I feel like I lost my relationship with the internet as a creative medium, so I'm just trying to get back into it.

It's been 5 years since I last published something, and in it I talked about how I wanted to start writing again. Oops. Well, hello again. I'm committing myself to a weekly writing practice, because I'd like to put my ideas out and iterate more.

I want to be more comfortable with being wrong. The best decisions I've made in art and life often come after trying a lot of things that don't work. Little experiments that test my variables and tinker at the edge of what I know. There's no better way to check my assumptions than to do it loud and publicly on the internet. Also, I've discovered that being myself on the internet nets cool life opportunities, so here I am again.

For most of my life the internet felt like a playground of possibility. Growing up as a web developer it felt like anything was possible with this digital canvas in front of me. You can shape ideas and send them to anyone through information waves coursing in the air. Some wizard shit. At the tips of my fingers, the edges of the universe; my screen, a portal. I looked up to and made friends with many who worked this world like magic (and many that still do to this day).

In recent years, I think I lost sight of this perspective. Once I started focusing on music full time, my internet focal points turned to major social media outlets. I studied how emerging artists built their brands and messaging through platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube.

Being a musician on the internet in 2025, you'd figure that magic on the internet would translate. If the web in 2010 felt like a multiverse – microblogs, free mixtape uploads, niche corners of the internet – you'd expect it to be crazier for artists now.. but instead it feels like things got less interesting. More pale and cookie cutter, each platform built to optimize certain flavors of content.

For a longer time than I'd like to admit, I got caught up in playing this game. I put all my eggs into content making and tried a bunch of tested methods to get my music out there, through the scope of how everybody else does it. I often fall into the trap of putting the content before the art, instead of making great work and building the narrative from there.

I've found a few methods that kind of work, and hundreds that have failed. I've tried a lot of angles to design a stable music career, though so far I've found myself using my tech background to sustain my life of making art. I've never really used it to push my art forward, only as a means to make money. I can unleash internet spells and yet somehow I found myself playing to Tiktok algorithms and optimizing attention spans.

Don't get me wrong – I think it's the best time in the history of the universe to become a musician. Tiktok gives you 200 views minimum; despite feeling like you have to grab someone's attention before they swipe away, it gives every bedroom producer an equal chance to bat.

So, I intend to continue to play the game, but I would like to do it on my own terms. In mediums that I feel really good about. I would like to be able to sustain a full-time art career, and my gut tells me that playing to the strengths of my past in technology will help me push forward here. I also have too many songs in the vault, so I'm just going to start releasing them. Music + web experiments to supplement the journey, side by side.

When I zoom out, I only want one thing: creative freedom to build and make things I love. I've tried many routes, and for the next few weeks I'm going to try once again. I'm going to expect failure and just try to be authentic to myself and my vision. I want to fail faster, because every iteration brings me a little bit closer – once I dust myself off, the next path always seems to emerge. Like a lot of people my age, I also feel like I'm running out of time (I'm not) so it's time to start swinging larger and more often.

So, here's the new deal with my life. Every week, for the next N weeks (TBD) I'm going to put something out on Friday. Welcome to the first drop (rehauling adhiv.com). At minimum I'll write a post here, and ideally couple it with an experiment on the internet. At worst, no one notices. At best, we learn something new.

I don't have a full plan yet, but I think that's part of the idea; build the bridge as I run. I'm going to be in the town square making some noise. Look out for me.

love,
adhiv

Thanks to Varun for reading a draft of this