Advertise on podcast: Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that I’ve experienced my fair share of loss over the past 59 years, and each time the wound is reopened so it never really gets a chance to heal. I would even say that grief and loss have become recurring characters in my life, rather than just a single episode walk-on in season 2 — sort of like The Smoking Man from The X-Files. I know that loss will show up again and again, so it’s not really even much of a surprise anymore. I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing it or that I’m comfortable with the arrangement — because as I said, each new loss still hurts — but over the past decade, I’ve been working on carving out a different relationship with it. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

For the better part of a year-and-a-half now, the Supernote Manta has been my daily driver when it comes to writing. Whether I’m journaling, starting a new edition of my newsletter, or simply capturing thoughts and ideas to flesh out later, the Manta is where nearly all of my writing begins. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

I’ve always thought of archives as places where things go when they’re finished. Sort of a record of the past or a cold storage collection of what mattered after the fact. But lately, I’ve started to think of an archive differently. Maybe it isn’t just a repository for things that stop being useful. Maybe it’s also where they start asking new questions. A few weeks ago, I picked up a scanner, which I wrote about in a previous Iteration. Since then, I’ve been scanning all sorts of things without much of a plan. Things like magazine covers, vintage ephemera, and old photographs. I’m not looking for anything in particular, I’m just following my curiosity and trusting that some of these pieces might surface later. Over the last few newsletters, I’ve tried to explore different ways of paying attention. For example, the camera says: “Pay attention to this moment.” The scanner says: “Look closer. There is more here than you thought.” I think the archive says: “Now sit with what you found long enough for it to tell you something you couldn’t hear (or see) at first.” CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

So there I was, looking through stacks of receivers, DVD players, and the odd VCR when I spotted something I didn’t recognize. It was big — big enough to cover nearly two receivers. A CD player was sitting on top of it and when I lifted it off, I think I actually gasped, which Adrianne says is a sure sign that you’ve found something good. It was a flatbed scanner made by a company called Viisan, a brand I’d never actually heard of. Epson? Sure. HP? Of course. Microtek? Absolutely. Viisan? Not so much. And like I said, it was big. Most flatbed scanners are letter or legal-sized, but this one was A3, which means it can scan tabloid-sized magazines like my old issues of LIFE and Look in one pass. LINKS Goodwill Homer Laughlin china Broyhill Brasilia side table Sansui 9090 Marantz 2270 Viisan LIFE Look Affinity Print Size Calculator CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

When I was a kid, the camera only came out for special occasions. A single roll of film might last months, sometimes longer. Most of the time the camera lived in a cupboard until there was a reason to bring it out. Birthdays. Christmas. Vacations. Graduations. Film wasn’t something you wasted, so every frame had to justify itself. Back then, the camera itself felt almost mysterious. My father loved machines of every kind, especially engines, and while I didn’t inherit his expertise, through him I became fascinated by how things worked. But a camera seemed different. It wasn’t just a machine. Somehow, it could stop time. It could preserve a moment long after the moment had passed. I didn’t understand how it worked at the time, only that it felt capable of something almost magical. What’s your instrument? What do you find yourself noticing? How does that curiosity find its way into your work — or your life? I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected]. LINKS YashicaMat 124G William Eggleston Pentax Super Program Maarten Rots CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

I've built more personal websites than I care to count, starting with my first one back in 1997. For years, the goal was simple — keep it fresh, keep it updated, keep the portfolio current enough to land the next job. I picked that habit up partly from Jakob Nielsen, the usability researcher who was convinced sites needed to feel alive to repeat visitors, and I ran with it — random hero images in early Javascript, the same trick later in ActionScript when Flash took over, even a menu I built as a cloth simulation in LightWave 3D for a site about Western furniture I designed with my dad. This time around, I'm talking about what changed. My last major site overhaul was the move to Carrd back in 2021, and the WordPress redesign I've been slow-walking for months isn't slow because I'm stuck — it's slow because the urgency that used to drive it just isn't there anymore. I'm not trying to convince anyone to hire me. I'm not chasing what's current. I'm more interested now in curating and archiving the work I've already done than in creating something new to prove a point. LINKS Jakob Nielsen Adobe (Macromedia) Flash universalstudios.com Carrd Lightwave 3D Blender My 3D Cloth Demo in Blender Gary Vee CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

"We're not geniuses, we're just regular guys who are interested in things." — Neil Peart On August 1st, 2015, Rush played their final show at the Forum in LA. I was there, just as I had been for so many Rush shows over the years. That show felt different — special in a way that we weren’t really prepared for. For months leading up to it, there were rumors that this would be the last show and after the final encore of “Working Man,” when Neil came out from behind his drum kit to take a bow with Alex and Geddy, the rumors became true. Over 40 years and thousands of shows, Neil never took a bow out front — instead, he just put down his sticks and quietly left the stage. As he wrote in “Limelight,” he simply couldn’t pretend a stranger was a long-awaited friend. I've been following a thread for over 40 years that started with a borrowed Rush record and led me to books, ideas, and work I couldn't have predicted. This iteration is about where that thread goes when you really pull it. LINKS Rush Rush live 6/7/26 in Los Angeles (Full Show) Neil Peart “Innerview” w/Jim Ladd (1980) Neil Peart’s last interview w/ Jim Ladd (2015) Neil Peart on Moving Pictures w/Strombo Rush Article Archive Neil Peart’s Favorite Books of All Time Hugh Syme Roger Dean Storm Thorgerson Taken by Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis Mick Rock CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

For most of my life, I’ve been trying to reconcile two very different ideas about success. One was rooted in practicality, achievement, and outcomes. The other was rooted in curiosity, learning, and exploration. In this episode, I look back at a question my mother asked me during my senior year of high school, the unexpected lessons hidden in a lifetime of creative work, and why I’ve come to realize that what I wanted was never really a career at all. It was a way of living. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

"Sometimes the thing you’re skilled at needs to be broken a little before it can surprise you again." For the past several years, I’ve primarily identified as a painter, despite the fact that the most consistent work I’ve done is writing. That said, lately I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that I might not want to paint anymore — at least not the way I’ve been doing it. Not because I’ve lost interest entirely, but maybe because I haven’t lost it enough. I can pretty consistently make paintings that “work” on some level, and, honestly, that might be part of the problem. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

Lately I’ve been feeling the weight of how complicated everything seems — I even wrote a bit about it in the last Iteration. It seems that the scale of it all — the speed, the certainty, the volume — can often make even small efforts feel almost invisible. I’ve caught myself wondering whether the things that I make or the conversations I have matter in any “real” way, and honestly, that unsettles me. And I suspect I’m not the only one who’s felt that. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

Towards the end of last year, I started thinking about building a new website for myself. Not just another vanity site (although I’ve built plenty of those), but more of an archive of the various things I’ve done over my career and a hub where I can share stories around what I’m thinking about and what I’m working on that aren’t dependent on The Algorithm. After years of inconsistent, and if I’m being honest, fairly half-hearted efforts to play the social media game, I’m finally done. I have no more interest in chasing likes or followers or the ever-elusive “brand deal.” I just want to make stuff in my quiet little studio and write about what I make — but also, and maybe more importantly, about what others are making, doing, and thinking about. In fact, in many ways, I kind of want my making to be a byproduct of what others are making, and maybe that includes you. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you, or worse, that I will.” I’m not going to lie, that hit pretty hard. I knew I was in a dark place, but we often think that we are the only ones who know just how bad it really is — that we are somehow hiding it from the rest of the world. It’s not true, of course, but that was me in that moment, and to hear the person I love the most in the world say that to me…let’s just say that it shone a light on the dark that I felt surrounded by. So for the past year and a half, I’ve been having the sessions and doing the deep work of unlearning what I had learned and letting go of some of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that have seemed so hell bent on keeping me out of the light. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed, I thought. One of my earliest memories of this truck is of waking up on the bench seat at Buckskin State Park on the Arizona side of the Colorado river. It was cold that morning — though it was light, the sun hadn’t yet crested the red rock hills that bordered the campground to the East. Dad and my stepmother Linda were both awake after having spent the night in sleeping bags in the bed of the truck. Dad had made a small fire that was crackling and popping and I remember the faint smell of coffee on the chilly morning air. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

I’ve shared this story before, and regardless of whether it’s true or just the stuff of photographic legend, it’s so good that I think it bears repeating every so often. The story goes that a photographer was presenting his portfolio to the great Jay Maisel. He asked Jay how he could take more interesting pictures, to which Jay immediately replied, “become a more interesting person.” It may sound trite, but I think it’s often easy for makers to become myopic in terms of the types of things that inspire them. Painters are often looking at other painters, photographers look at other photographers, musicians are often listening to other musicians, and so on. If you’re always looking (or listening) to what’s familiar, the odds of you arriving at something that’s unfamiliar (even if it’s only unfamiliar to you), are pretty slim, which is why it can be helpful to look outside of your comfort zone for inspiration. I’m interested in almost everything so as you might imagine, my feeds are pretty eclectic. While I’ve gotten away from posts like this over the years, I think I’d like to jump back in and offer up an occasional look at some of the things that have caught my attention, and might catch yours. LINKS Long Hot Summers / The Story Of The Style Council Mubi interview with Lee Pace The incredible tiny home of Masato Igarashi You can find all of the links I mention in this Iteration on my Substack. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]

For a long time now — years, in fact — I’ve leaned toward the belief that I deserve to be paid for the creative work I do. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least not from a certain point of view. After all, in a capitalist system that’s sort of how it works, right? You do a job, you earn money, you buy things. On the other side, goods and services cost money and we generally accept that premise. Cars, houses, a gallon of milk, a bucket of chicken — whatever it is, we accept that acquiring those things is transactional. I exchange the money I earn for the thing that you produce. The same goes for services like electricity, gas, your phone bill, or internet access. That’s just how the system works. But there are gray areas. Some types of goods and services seem to be more or less exempt from that agreement — namely creative ones. Music, movies, and software often fall into that bucket. And, to make it more personal, art. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: Subscribe Email me: [email protected]