Continuous Project Altered Quarterly | March 2026
Against Optimization
Late last week I was refining some of the internal operations of my business, including switching online bookkeeping platforms. The promise of ease from one platform combined with disappointment from another won me over, so I found myself waiting on hold to speak with a customer service representative from the new platform for the fifth time in two days. I tried to work on this and that, gritting my teeth through the insipid hold music, but I was continually distracted by my frustration: Am I just trading one empty tech promise for another? When and why did I become so dependent on digital technology and online platforms? Should I just disconnect this call and set up my own bookkeeping ledger?
Tech promises a world without friction, freeing us from operational tasks so that we can reclaim our lives from life’s innumerable drudgeries. My jaw was clenched while waiting on hold because the company whose platform I was purchasing marketed the ease they would provide and then didn’t deliver it themselves. But I was also dysregulated because while I know in my bones that friction is part of being human, I’ve gradually become hypnotized by the promise of the optimization that contemporary technology promises. What I’ve gradually come to see for myself over the past five years or so is that, not only is the promise of tech for optimal operational ease in a microbusiness like mine (and most of clients’) a myth, I don’t always even need or want the convenience it advertises.
From nature’s point of view, friction is (to use tech parlance) a feature, not a bug. Yes, friction requires an expenditure of energy, but the upsides of that investment are legion. Friction allows us to move through the world and contributes to our capacity to mature from an infant into an adult. In both personal and business growth, intellectual, cognitive, and relational friction contribute to resilience, which is one of the most essential qualities to cultivate for a sustainable life’s work. If we can’t confront, move through, and learn from challenges, how can we possibly flourish in a world where the only constant is change?
We need friction to learn and comprehend all kinds of things, from the difference between my body and the chair I’m sitting in to the complex physical and mental tasks I do all day every day without even thinking about them. Friction contributes to the evolution of our personalities, our character, our world view, and it is an integral part of all kinds of relationships. Tech promises a frictionless world, but friction is what makes us human. The fewer challenges we face, the less resilient we become.
I'm increasingly destabilized by my dependence on tech because its ubiquity in my life has conditioned me to doubt my own capabilities through its inferences that I will lose my relationships, my connections to social and cultural life will dissolve, my business will fail, I won’t be eligible to participate in ordinary acts of citizenship, and I may not even survive unless I adopt, submit, and conform to the platforms tech firms are selling. Deep down, I know this isn’t true, but even as I write this, a little voice in my mind is whispering: Am I sure I really believe it isn’t true? When I’m clear headed about it, allowing platforms into my life at large and implementing tech products in my business has produced far more anxiety and busy work than ease. If that’s what optimization looks like, I'd like a refund.
Spoiler alert for fans of The Pitt who haven't watched the current season yet ~~~ In episode seven of the second season, the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center CEO shuts down the hospital’s wifi connection and computer systems due to the threat of a cyberattack, leaving the team to rely on paper charts, a land line, a fax machine, manual x-ray film processing, and staff members running data and orders between departments. The friction that arises from the sudden shift to analog forms of information gathering and transmission reveals the degree of resilience within each character and the team as a whole, measured in their particular responses to the situation. In the process, the characters learn more about themselves, each other, their patients, and the systems they use to deliver patient care.
The story line also poses questions about the endless quest for optimization we find ourselves amid in the mid-2020s. Why are we using finite resources to invent new ways to do work when we already have sufficient systems in place? What is lost when we give our human work away to digital technologies? No matter what technologies we use, it's our tolerance for friction (in the form of resilience) that wins the day when we face daily minor problems, as well as when a crisis strikes. As humans, we long to use our vast potential to learn, create, communicate, and adapt. At its best, technology—whether pencil on paper or large language models—helps us live that fullness.
In my business, I have the opportunity to make choices about what kinds of technologies will help me deliver the best service I can to my clients and have the dubious privilege of too many options. It’s all too easy to romanticize the time when the most advanced technology I used to disseminate an essay like this was a copy machine. It's also easy to imagine a world in which I have given over so much of my life to tech that I no longer know how to do anything at all without it. Neither of these perspectives is particularly useful. Facing my twin fears of losing my humanity to technology and being left behind, I’m doing my best to discern fact from fiction and make values-aligned choices that serve my clients, my business, and me. I’m often astonished by how many tech platforms I use to run my tiny business and how helpful they truly are, despite my frustrations. But I'm also pretty sure that no amount of tech can replace resilience, so I'll pick and choose the tech tools that work for me and also continue to seek out and welcome in F-R-I-C-T-I-O-N to help me build it.
Continuous Project
Updates
+ I’m doing an IN PERSON collaboration with the amazing Yucca Valley Material Lab on April 11. In this afternoon workshop, we’ll discuss how to MAKE IT HAPPEN: find, make, choose, accept, (and even—when necessary—decline!) opportunities. Register here :)
+ 2026 Guggenheim Fellows will be publicly announced very soon. Almost every Fellow I know (a quick count tallies 11 in the Continuous Project world!) tells a similar story, something to the effect of: "I applied and was rejected so many times. I swore I'd quit applying, but I mustered the will to apply AGAIN, and I got it!" The quality of your application is important, of course, but your persistence is just as significant. I co-steward the Guggenheim Application Cohort with The Artist’s Office and Ears Open every summer to provide guidance, accountability, and support for your application in community with other applicants. Our approach emphasizes the process over the outcome, setting a tone for applying year after year. Registration for this year's Guggenheim Application Cohort opens this Thursday, March 26. Whether you're applying for the first time or the twentieth, we hope you'll join us.
+ Working on WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution with Connie Butler twenty (!) years ago was a foundational time in both my professional and personal life. While the exhibition helped pave the way to greater visibility for many of the artists in the exhibition whose work intersected with the feminist movement, our field continues to struggle with inclusivity and equity on many fronts, including gender parity. I'm both enraged by the fact that we still have to talk about this issue in 2026 and thrilled to be part of an ambitious and inspiring day of celebration, consciousness raising, and resource-sharing on the 10th anniversary of Now Be Here, a vital project rooted in the deep dream of gender equality that feminism upholds. I'll be leading a panel discussion called "No Unsolicited Submissions: Navigating relationships with curators and gallerists," and the whole day is packed full of amazing friends and colleagues coming together to remind us that there is still work to be done, and while it's often a slog, it is also immensely joyful. Subscribe to the Now Be Here mailing list for more details about Now Let's Talk on May 31.
+ I am always available for new and returning Private Consulting clients, and I love leading Group Consulting for independent self-organized groups and institutional cohorts alike. This powerful work is contributing to the gradual yet emergent transformation of how society perceives, acknowledges, and compensates cultural labor. Book a discovery call to explore working together if you’re to new to CP, and established clients are welcome to book online any time~~~
