the tyranny of Now
I've 'quit' effbook-- which amounts to deleting the app from my phone, and from my faves on the laptop and preload tabs at work. Now I only navigate to it directly, which amounts to a handful of times a week.
Didn't matter how many posts I hid or folks I unfollowed, I couldn't shake the feeling I liked people less all the time. That it was isolating and confining me, and others by extension, more than it was really connecting or empowering.
Twitter will be harder. It's also gotten (even) shriller... I have 4 accounts (!), 3 which I follow and update with some frequency. They're organized around topics (movies/culture, sports, books, and religion/current events) so it's been easier to cull the feeds of folks who stray off the path. (This, of course, has its own pitfalls. I don't want to read only those with whom I already agree. It's the hectoring and the haranguing I can't broker.)
It's fascinating to see how the same events are immediately interpreted through a vastly different lens, and I don't find myself coming down for or against anything so much as I just can't engage in the perpetual outrage machine. It's not that I don't feel angry or that I'm indifferent to issues or events, but that I literally cannot bear the spiritual stress of being 'fired-up' all the time, nor of the need to constantly evidence my 'support' (whatever that means) for the side of right and good, to an audience. I find it to be so sick, personally, that I'm hesitant to instagram so much as an ice-cream sundae- I don't want to be an advertisement for myself.
Honestly? I've dreamed about being seen, about being well-known, my entire life. Growing up I thought this made me unusual but come to find out, it's pretty common and isn't special at all-- and then reality TV, I noticed, and now social media make it possible in ways I'd never imagined. And I'm just sick of it, sick of the threads and vestiges of self-glorification in myself. For decades I walked around imagining I'm being watched; it's a delicate distinction, but now I more wish for the work to go through me to be valuable to others, not to be thought worthwhile because of it. The love of my wife and kids and family and faithful friends are sufficient to sustain. And yet the ego persists.
One effect of the detox, I just realized, is that I'm dreaming more. More about friends I haven't seen in a long time, people who still have a claim to my care... my thoughts are freer to roam and rest upon the unknown instead of merely satisfying an idle curiosity with a few clicks.
One of my best friends actually called me yesterday, and we had a half-hour conversation that never touched on politics or current events and yet also was not about our cats or what shows we were bingeing (to call out the old ladies dominating the neighborhood coffee shop this evening. Oh did I want to strangle them then and there!). Refreshing.
In the morning I will cut short my nap to go see JOHN WICK 2 while the wife is at work and the kids at school. It's a hard life, I know... I do work every Friday & Saturday night. While I watch sports, ok. (The whole "Yes, but.." thing. Rinse, repeat.)
p.s. I watched the original again last week and am struck by how its amoral-but-ordered world is so greatly appealing. We've always enjoyed violence vicariously, but Wick is a particular hero for our particular time: what an escape, not to have to be encumbered by moral forthrightness and the burden of goodness! And yet to have reason and structure for the dispatch of fellow human beings. Makes more sense than the real world we choose to live in-- which is why I subscribe to that particular reality less and less all the time, I trust.
Didn't matter how many posts I hid or folks I unfollowed, I couldn't shake the feeling I liked people less all the time. That it was isolating and confining me, and others by extension, more than it was really connecting or empowering.
Twitter will be harder. It's also gotten (even) shriller... I have 4 accounts (!), 3 which I follow and update with some frequency. They're organized around topics (movies/culture, sports, books, and religion/current events) so it's been easier to cull the feeds of folks who stray off the path. (This, of course, has its own pitfalls. I don't want to read only those with whom I already agree. It's the hectoring and the haranguing I can't broker.)
It's fascinating to see how the same events are immediately interpreted through a vastly different lens, and I don't find myself coming down for or against anything so much as I just can't engage in the perpetual outrage machine. It's not that I don't feel angry or that I'm indifferent to issues or events, but that I literally cannot bear the spiritual stress of being 'fired-up' all the time, nor of the need to constantly evidence my 'support' (whatever that means) for the side of right and good, to an audience. I find it to be so sick, personally, that I'm hesitant to instagram so much as an ice-cream sundae- I don't want to be an advertisement for myself.
Honestly? I've dreamed about being seen, about being well-known, my entire life. Growing up I thought this made me unusual but come to find out, it's pretty common and isn't special at all-- and then reality TV, I noticed, and now social media make it possible in ways I'd never imagined. And I'm just sick of it, sick of the threads and vestiges of self-glorification in myself. For decades I walked around imagining I'm being watched; it's a delicate distinction, but now I more wish for the work to go through me to be valuable to others, not to be thought worthwhile because of it. The love of my wife and kids and family and faithful friends are sufficient to sustain. And yet the ego persists.
One effect of the detox, I just realized, is that I'm dreaming more. More about friends I haven't seen in a long time, people who still have a claim to my care... my thoughts are freer to roam and rest upon the unknown instead of merely satisfying an idle curiosity with a few clicks.
One of my best friends actually called me yesterday, and we had a half-hour conversation that never touched on politics or current events and yet also was not about our cats or what shows we were bingeing (to call out the old ladies dominating the neighborhood coffee shop this evening. Oh did I want to strangle them then and there!). Refreshing.
In the morning I will cut short my nap to go see JOHN WICK 2 while the wife is at work and the kids at school. It's a hard life, I know... I do work every Friday & Saturday night. While I watch sports, ok. (The whole "Yes, but.." thing. Rinse, repeat.)
p.s. I watched the original again last week and am struck by how its amoral-but-ordered world is so greatly appealing. We've always enjoyed violence vicariously, but Wick is a particular hero for our particular time: what an escape, not to have to be encumbered by moral forthrightness and the burden of goodness! And yet to have reason and structure for the dispatch of fellow human beings. Makes more sense than the real world we choose to live in-- which is why I subscribe to that particular reality less and less all the time, I trust.