Unintentionally, I stopped writing. Like the earth under layers of snow, I felt weighted down by the auspices of winter and the world at large. The news of the day is unrelenting, painful, infuriating. To make the choice to ignore it, means choosing to exercise privilege – a momentary state that many of us are in – aware, but untouched as of yet. Indulging ourselves with entertainment and distraction, because we know not exactly what to do. We send money or protest out into the world and then turn inward, safe once again, comforted by the knowledge that we did something.
I’ve been feeling a lot of discomfort about that and my forays into social media are coming to an end. There are always those who go on about its usefulness and of staying “in the know” and the value of connection. I suspect that they have great mental filters, that their skin is thick – that they don’t internalize things. They are able to take away more from it than what is taken. It’s funny how physically tough I can be, but will lay awake at night because some rando on the internet insulted me.
When I was a child, I was frequently told I was too sensitive. It took a long time out in the world to build an armor of sarcasm, a facial expression to scare off men, women, children, and pets. I focused on being physically adept and stronger, because that was another kind of toughness. I developed a dark sense of humor, learned to laugh harshly when I was frightened or despairing. But the tender part is necessary to who I am. It is not going away. And it feels battered.
FOMO (fear of missing out) is an easy disease to catch. I love learning – reading about all kinds of things and people. The information age is a heady, addictive time – to have access to anything I’d like to learn. The learning is a shell game though. What one gains in quantity, one loses in quality. The faster and easier information is acquired, the less permanence it has. My brain is cycling shorter and shorter. In essence, I feel less capable of the nuanced thinking that produces meaningful discourse and art. I’m spending far too much time arguing in my head with bytes of pithiness.
I’ve deactivated Twitter, cancelled Amazon Prime, locked down Facebook (I have to maintain it for a volunteer organization I work for), and am returning to the simple life of a writer/blogger/reader. I miss my brain before Twitter and Facebook. I miss being able to sit with stillness. Some people are able to do it all, but I am not one of them. An introvert in the world is an introvert online. There is only so much time and energy. And I want to reclaim mine.
The Ballad of the Unhappy Tweeter
It sits like lead in the belly – the impotence of social media.
Write a thoughtful response. Delete with frustration.
Write an angry response. Delete with embarrassment.
Witness the stupid, the self-important, the self-righteous.
Performative -isms.
Bragging about their gods and guns and wokeness.
Flippant. Send brightly-colored hearts and smiley faces and special punctuation.
Passive-aggressive positivity.
Faux patriotism.
Pledge your fealty to the troops who suck sand for suited men.
Chuckling on the golf course about loopholes.
Copy, paste, copy, paste.
Meme, meme, meme.
Faux intellectualism.
Self-identifying conspiracy theorists, Christian, libertarian, bro, coward, crypto-fan, cultist, racist, misogynist
who want to be inside the bodies they deride or subjugate them to the state.
Fondling their threats of violence in the shape of guns.
1A is for thee, but not for those others.
2A as self-esteem.
Copy, paste, copy, paste.
Meme, meme, meme.
To leave the platform is heresy.
You will be unfollowed.
You will be untethered, unpublished, unimportant.
As you were before the crowd entered your brain.
Deactivate
The room empties.
You plant your feet on terra firma.
Rendered invisible, but able to see once again.
won’t-I-continue-blogging evaluation, but I’m skipping it this year. Each time an anniversary rolls around, I look at the blog’s stats, think about engagement, and all the other metrics that I’m supposed to care about. Then I willfully ignore it, because it’s highly unlikely I’ll change anything. It’s just an exercise in self-flagellation.
The last couple of years have been about putting meat on the bone. Writing more, playacting less. This has also meant getting a painful reality check. Recognizing the gap between my skill set and what kind of writer I envisioned myself being. It meant cutting the daydreaming and fantasies out and looking at what I was actually capable of – my bucket of cold water moment as a writer. Awareness is the first step apparently.
In talking with other writers and doing some mentoring, I’ve discovered a passion beyond just spitting out my own words. I love working to help people improve their writing and I know a lot about how to do that. It’s also forced me to review grammar, sentence structure, and the rhythm of language (why one phrase or paragraph reads better than another). Editing has become a discovery process and it is pushing me to be more experimental with my own writing.
Maybe it will be like the year my family took an Amtrak vacation shortly after a fatal train crash. We rationalized that we should still go, since the company would be upping their safety checks – perhaps it was even the safest time to go. Now that social media platforms are being raked over the coals and forced to come to terms with the idea that their platforms are shitty human free-for-alls and treasonous manure spreaders, maybe some things will change. Except people don’t. And companies tend to subvert their shittiness, rather than improve their products. I’m pretty sure it’s all going to still be a time-wasting swamp of excrement.
In the past, it seemed important to have a clear delineation between professional and personal selves. These days, every day is casual day, the profane blends with the political, and metaphorically everyone is in sweatpants. I’m not sure how I feel about that. There is the judgmental voice in my head from my prudish, proper, spit-shine-your shoes, stiff-upper-lip background – impacted by my British mother and grandmother and a stint in the military. And then there is the hippie liberal, comfortable means confidence, pay-attention-to-substance-not-surface, throw-no-stones person that I often long to be.
I sometimes naively mention my blog to people and am horrified when they want to know what the URL is. Then I’ll quickly denigrate it – oh, it’s nothing, just a little something I threw together, you don’t want to waste your time… I’ve written a lot of personal stories here, used some blue language, rattled off a political opinion or twenty. The thought of people I see regularly, reading it, makes me want to throw up just a bit. When someone says they’ve read my blog, I feel a bit like I’ve just woken up in front of a panel of judges. In my underwear. Yet I have no intention of changing the tone of the blog.
The problem with this approach are the insincere, attention hogs who view social media as some sort of stage upon which they can play act any role. Provocateurs and narcissists and sociopaths populate these venues, savoring the idea that they are the puppet masters of others’ emotions, while taking no responsibility for the division and spitefulness they sow. Then there are the maternal, smiley emoticon people who tsk, tsk any negative emotions, trying to have everyone make nice, no matter what the issue. And then there are people like me – a little narcissistic in writing publicly, constantly irritated by bad grammar, and so easily baited into anger by blatant ignorance. I am not well-suited to these venues.
We’ve had another busy month with our in-house band. In addition to playing viola, violin, and piano, my daughter has decided to pick up saxophone. We should get a bulk discount for rental instruments and I should get some parenting points for letting sax happen. When I was 14, I was listening to Rick Springfield and playing Baroque music on my flute. My kid is playing Ellington and Dvorák and songs from Hamilton. I love how the internet has enabled us to experience a wider slice of the world.
When The Atlantic hired Kevin Williamson last month, I cancelled my subscription. I’ve finally hit a wall with media entities that give platforms to every wingnut on the spectrum lest someone accuse them of being biased or they lose a market share. The defense for the hire is that his writing is great – if great means deliberately provocative. There are a lot of great writers and most of them don’t advocate that women who have abortions be hanged. Skill does not excuse malevolence.
Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block
After my futile search for a book club aimed at writers, I’ve decided to set up one of my own online. I’ve been doing a lot of research on what might work and have put together a website, so look for a blog post announcement in the next week or so for the TGS Writers’ Book Club.
I always find the time at the beginning of the new year to be particularly poignant. It’s around this time that I turn into an internet detective, in search of the people who were, for years at a time, part of my life and then no more. Where had they gone? Who had they become?
The picture of a glamorous couple smiling from a beach in Aruba cannot show that they met in a support group for grief or alcoholism. It cannot show the nights of tears or the lack of trust they had to get through in order to become that picture. It cannot show that he’s been cheating on her the last four months and that she has given up on being loved. It cannot show that on the second Tuesday next month, at 7:32p.m., on their way to visit his mother at the nursing home, they will be killed by a drunk driver.
Perhaps this is why I sit here, full up on visual images, but famished for stories. It is not enough to see the photo flip book of someone’s life, multiplying and aging and losing shape. I have the momentary urge to write, call, or email. What to say? Can you tell me what happened between Point A, when I knew you as the person who could drink me under the table, and Point B, when you posted a picture of a very large collection of paper-mâché elephants?
I’m of the school of thought that the past is past for a reason. That we grow and change and hopefully evolve beyond our initial capabilities. Looking back only serves to remind us of progress and of the many lessons we’ve learned on this journey, with its inevitable end. Perhaps all we can do is bow our heads in thanks to those who, for better and for worse, met us on the road.
The Green Study 