Well, given that my 12 Months Later review of my social media exodus was read as more of a 2023 Review (which it was, to be fair) I might as well do another re-view for 2024 😅

2024 was kicked off by going out with some fellow World Youth Day pilgrims to the Westpac OpenAir Cinema on the Fleet Steps overlooking Farm Cove and the rest of Sydney Harbour. The film we’d arranged to see was One Life (2023), a biographical film about humanitarian Nicholas Winton and more broadly about the Kindertransport of Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain at the beginning of World War II. This is hardly a film for the faint of heart and as if to accentuate this point we sat, in provided ponchos, for about the last two-thirds of the film under wave after wave of rain pouring over Sydney Harbour.

Watching a film outdoors on Sydney Harbour in rolling rain running off my poncho-covered head is an experience I won’t soon forget.

 
Speaking of World Youth Day Lisbon, much of 2024 was spent finishing off a 12-month voucher for photo printing by having a selection of my photos from 2023 physically printed and then arranged by me in a photo album.
To mark the 1-year anniversary of the WYD Pilgrimage in July, I organized two get-together lunches for the Over 18s Pilgrim (Italy and Portugal) cohort which many appreciated.
​
I cannot comment about my fellow pilgrims’ experiences. But for me, a year-and-a-half on from Lisbon I’m only just coming to grips with, and processing through, what we all went through over those 22 hectic days of pilgrimage across Mediterranean Europe. But I can say that, for having done it once, I at least have more of an idea of what to expect a second time around and how to manage things and myself better than I did the first time, please God.

​In comparison to 2023: 2024 was an exponential increase of train trips, train festivals and rail heritage excursions with my father. Our travels took us north to the Hunter Region around Newcastle and as far south as Goulburn and the Southern Highlands. Indeed, there were many long days with very-early morning starts. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, yet we were very tired by the end of those same days.

​
September saw me travelling by airplane up to Brisbane for the IGNITE Conference 2024 organized by Emmanuel Community and its Ignite Youth ministry team.
This was the real curveball of 2024 and it was my first ever experience of IGNITE.

​All the talks by various speakers that I went to were good and informative on different parts of the Catholic faith life. A special stand out was the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge’s talk on Encountering the Scriptures where he discussed how the bible “goes to the heart of hopelessness to find a hope that cannot be destroyed.”
He truly enkindled in his audience a greater appreciation of “the black fire on white fire” as the Rabbis describe the Holy Scriptures.

The rallies at IGNITE were experiences. There was much good in them, but by the end of the three-and-a-bit days I was ready to run back to my bunk-hole at home and not have another thousand decibels going right through my body.
​
After attending IGNITE and commuting across Brisbane each morning and evening, it has confirmed to me that what’s needed is smaller and quieter events where good conversation can take place. There’s a place for the big events, as long as they are not the only option available.

​On a less frazzled note, that same month I also started shooting 35mm film with a re-loadable plastic point-and-shoot camera. It has been a nice change of pace from taking photos with my smartphone.

 
I don’t really know or have even an idea of what 2025 will bring, apart for the Jubilee Year of Hope that has just begun. Dear God, may this new year see an outpouring of Your love and of experiences of hopes and dreams fulfilled.
 
​
Let’s see if there’ll be a 2025 Review, eh?

 
Vincent Cavanagh
3 Jan 2025

​Well, it’s been 12 months since I started my Social Media Exodus and now it’s time to review the year that was.

​Okay, so starting off, 2023 was World Youth Day year for me. You may have seen some posts here and there on the blog and archived on the website, and possibly also on Facebook (sarcasm).

Speaking of the aforementioned social media platform, I think it’s safe to say that (apart from WYD) I haven’t been signed into it any more than strictly necessary. Nowadays it functions, for me personally, as more of an alert-slash-events manager and reference tool for finding people and past events.
​
Since WYD I have been using Messenger far more than I thought I ever would in my whole life.
It’s certainly been a change of pace having a social life.

Twitter is all but officially mothballed, waiting for a reason (if any) to actively post on it again.
​
Even though most Catholic parish Youth Ministries appear to have highly active profiles, I still don’t ever see myself returning to Instagram. Certainly not under my own name in any case.

As for YouTube… oh, dear. Apart from proactively uploading two videos from WYD Lisbon featuring the lead vocals of Fr Samuel French I’ve been passively over-consuming other people’s YouTube videos.

My anxieties over travel, packing, and WYD preparations absolutely did not help cut down on my ‘Watch time’ as I had hoped to rein in 12 months earlier. Being stuck in a maelstrom of choice-paralysis over what small new camera to buy to take over with me to Europe for the pilgrimage didn’t cut down wasted hours either. And in any case, I ended up taking more photos with my smartphone than I did with the camera I bought to stop me over-using said same smartphone. Live and learn, eh? I have bought a Peak Design camera strap that should help aid in using the camera more in future.
​
And speaking of the future, I am all too aware of my current (ahem!) “habit” of bookmarking videos and website articles about various different foods, religious sites, and locations of interest across both East and Southeast Asia in the possibility of preparation(!) for 2027 World Youth Day. People are not kidding when they talk about the WYD/Travel "bug".

As an aside, I still don’t think that I’d ever be able to learn, let alone read, Hangul / Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. I’ve accepted that A) I don’t have to know everything and B) that I’m going to be especially reliant on those who can and have persevered to learn Korean.

Returning to YouTube specifically, I did come across the DF Tube Chrome Extension that has been of some great help in cutting down more video-related rabbit holes than I would have without it.
Its main attraction (for me) was the ability to turn off the righthand video suggestion box whilst watching a YouTube video. Admittedly it makes things lopsided visually, but it does mean that I have fewer distractions from the video in front of me. Sadly, DF Tube can’t do anything about my procrastination. That’s all on me.


​So, to sum up. I have been relatively withdrawn from my social media profiles – discounting blogging about the WYD pilgrimage. I have gained a social life that is aided by messaging applications which come with their own problems – the applications, not the social life.

My personal struggles with self-discipline and YouTube over-consumption remain. In part I know that some of this is due to a lack of projects and regular routine. Pray for me.

Putting my focus on posting blogs and standardizing parts of this website has helped me feel less pressured than I would have been if I was still only posting on Facebook or Twitter. As well as not having as much comparison-itis with the edited and project lives of other people on social media. This doesn’t mean that I still don’t struggle with comparison, it’s just not as severe as it has been in the past.


In closing I think that I will continue as I have done so these past 12 months and with God’s help get a better grip over my YouTube-surfing and other self-defeating habits.

Until next time.


Vincent Cavanagh
25 Jan 2024

#ChisholmWalkSydney

Vincent Cavanagh
~30 April 2023

The only upside from some of this is coming across one academic who in her own way is coming to virtually the same conclusions that Pope Paul VI did in Humanae vitae almost* 55 years ago.

Her Substack can be found here, and an interview with her on YouTube, here.

Another upside, apart from some very pertinent and useful clips from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s many tours, has been discovering a lady of intellect and sense on YouTube under the name of Baggage Claim: claim the baggage in your life holding you down and make it your own.

She has some very refreshing and realistic essays on, to name but a few: difference between service and celebrity; how the far left attack the (often life-saving) work of Dr. Jordan Peterson; the ever-visible rise and exposure of Cultural Narcissism in current filmmaking; and the emasculation and derogation of male role models in film and pop–culture.


​WYD Lisbon 2023
So tomorrow is both the anniversary death of Caroline Chisholm and the First Formation Session for all WYD pilgrims in my diocese in the lead up to Lisbon 2023.

I am both desperate for the ball to begin rolling but also struggling at times to contain my panic to manageable levels.
Such is the way of being for a person who does not thrive on (nor is very much enamoured by) the living by the seat of your pants–lifestyle that so many others appear not only to embrace but incarnate within their whole being.

On a related note, our pilgrimage group has been branded “Magnify”. Personally, this does not sit true with me, and I am left to wonder how much analysis went into this decision.
I can very well understand, and sympathize with, the more obvious reasons for choosing Magnify: to increase or amplify something greatly (i.e., Mary’s “yes” to becoming the Mother of God).

But alternatively, the word magnify can also mean to increase for greater scrutiny certain faults or failures that have previously been ignored or pushed aside as being of “no real importance”, or “above my pay grade.”

I am wary of the double–sided nature of the choice of “Magnify” as the identifier for the diocesan pilgrimage. As the book of Genesis reminds us: words have power. Often beyond the borders of our physical perception.

Sadly, I appear to have been born a fault-finder.


And your art?
Yes, two-and-a-half weeks is a long time between posts.

I’ve been devoting my energy more pointedly of late towards a project that began all the way back in February. That is all that I can give myself permission to say at the present moment, because it is somewhat tangentially dependent upon whether or not certain things happen tomorrow.

I do know that my life is greatly diminished when I don’t draw or make art and I hope to get back into it.

It was 3 days later, on the Wednesday (16 March 2022), that a friend texted me with the conformation that I was hacked. They had received the exact same message as I had, but this time it was using my Instagram profile to do its dirty trickery. (see image below).

Thankfully I never linked my Instagram messages to Facebook Messenger; I have no idea how much worse this whole fiasco could have been if I had.

From an email from a fellow artist on Instagram, I learnt that my Instagram Stories [short videos] had been taken over by content promoting Bitcoin**, just like my acquaintance’s account had started doing in the weeks before I received/responded to the fake message.

Thus began a very trying time for me that lasted the remainder of the week, and following weekend, to twice try and confirm my identity/ownership of cavanaghcreative to Instagram through their Instagram Selfie-ID system.
Which from my personal experience I can say, in the most polite way possible, ain’t worth a cracker.

Yes, I have grown a beard [which shouldn’t really matter with facial recognition] since my profile picture was taken, which for the record actually is a photo of me — not a puppy or an oblique, black and white arty photograph, but an actual, front on, photograph of my face, in colour. (And yes, even just writing about this is enough to make my blood boil again.)

And furthermore, there is/was a photo (or two) of myself taken with other human beings on my Instagram page, which to any other reasonable layman should have been more than enough telemetry/bio-data for Instagram (or parent company Facebook) to check against the two Selfie-videos I sent them to confirm my identity as the legitimate owner of the hacked account, cavanaghcreative.

During this time I proceeded to the best of my abilities to warn family, friends and general acquaintances through texts, messaging apps, and posts on both Facebook and Twitter, that:
— my Instagram was Hacked;
— NOT to respond to any private Instagram messages from me (ie. cavanaghcreative);
— if they themselves were on Instagram, to please flag the account as being Hacked/Spam;
— and to unfollow cavanaghcreative and Block it from contacting them in future.

On 21 March 2022 I received information that my former account was no longer "public" or found via Instagram’s search functionable. It was also devoid of any 'posts' or 'follower' number (see image above).

Either everyone flagging cavanaghcreative as a fake account finally got through to Instagram, or the constant barrage of reporting put the hacker off. Sadly, I just don’t know. Hopefully the hacker hasn’t just left cavanaghcreative as a trojan Private Account; but again, I don’t know.

I would like to thank those who did flag the account as hacked and hopefully stopped any more people from getting hacked through my own personal mistake, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other account for this hacker or many others to keep on tricking people.

So, with that in mind, and given that I have no wish to give Instagram the satisfaction of my creating another account† just for them to inflate their subscription/member numbers, I have taken the step of removing myself from Instagram.

As of 13 March 2022, I am no longer on Instagram. The app has also been obliterated from my smartphone.

For the foreseeable future I will now be focusing my energies on posting content to this blog, not on social media. Which on reflection is probably a good thing, given how (cough cough) irregularly I’ve been posting on here up until now.

Until next time, God bless, stay safe and avoid any badly worded messages or emails.

~ Vincent Cavanagh, 29 March 2022.

Sorry, the new characters are still sketchbook bound.

But as you may have guessed from the title, I have been reading a bit of G.K.Chesterton recently, 'What's Wrong With The World', to be precise, and enjoying some of his quotes that circulate through social media.

In that interesting book Chesterton writes about the completely different relationship that ordinary people have with their homes, compared to wealthy people. For ordinary people, anarchy is only possible at home, and that is a blessed thing. Because at home, if you want to, you can have pea-green walls with pink spots, carpet on the ceiling, slate tiles on the floor, a picnic on the floor if you feel like it, and the glorious comfort of getting around in dressing gown and slippers. 

Then on Twitter, @GKCdaily posted this quotation:
'Perhaps the real meaning of St George and the dragon is that an evil has to be about as big and ugly as a dragon before an Englishman even knows it is there.'

​Has anything of that truth changed since Chesterton's day?

Maybe next time I will regale you with submarines, frisbee-playing elephants and stir-frys. We'll see.