Puppies, Cookies, and Giggling Babies

(Just giving the new title a shot.  This is classic bait and switch...)

Nowhere, in any ancient text, or contained within any bylaws of this culture, does it stipulate that one must remain in touch with everything.  We have been examining our addictions to social media and what it does to us lately. Nice. I have to add that the notion that any one person has to have up-to-the-minute information at the ready at all times is ludicrous.  This isn’t a question of willful ignorance.  The question is what it always has been: How much time from my finite life am I willing to devote to this shit?

I had to take a step back.  I wasn’t as addicted as some and I managed to escape political arguments for the most part.  My problem was its poisonous effect on my creative process.  Facebook, Twitter, and all the websites they draw content from are drenched in opinions and critique, often by dumbasses or others who are paid to write commentary for clicks and advertisements dollars. 

This blog is full of my opinions and my feelings from a singular perspective.  I’m also under no delusions. No one reads this. This is for me. This is a practice site for me because I am opinionated.  I do it for word count.  I do it because I journaled for 20 years before I ever started a blog.  The time devoted to social media has nothing to do with this site, it has to do with the shit I really care about.  I write books. I want to get better at writing books. 

Writing books is some hard-ass work.

You have to juggle a million ideas and keep them spinning in the air for a good 90 days straight.  That’s for just the first draft.  Three months is a lot of time to let self-doubt and foreign opinions creep into your process.  Negativity can take root and kill an entire project.  It can keep a musician from completing a record, or a young artist from practicing their skills to get good. 

Of course, I want my books to sell a million copies.  Anyone who says different is fooling themselves. I want it so I can continue to write for a living. What I’m not excited about is drawing one million critiques.  That comes with the territory, but there is no rule that says I have to read them.  I don’t want to know what they think. Good or bad.  Good is something I can glean from sales.  If I sold a bunch of copies, it must be good enough for someone to read.  But the critique isn’t for me.  It’s for someone else. 

And ‘critique’ is giving it more credence than it deserves.  It’s just everyday assholes and their opinions.  This sucks.  This is lame. The thing I like is better.  Weak. Dumb.  Does anyone need that at all?  For anything?

Personally, Facebook has comments that make me feel bad.  That’s really what this is all about.  It's not all negative, but it's enough to make it worse than real life. I mean that.  In your day-to-day, how often do you encounter someone who is specifically trying to make you feel like a piece of shit?  It’s life, so it does happen, but every single day?  That’s what social media is.  It’s an outlet for the weak-minded and the angry to take it out on the world.  Maybe they need that to survive.  Fine.  I don’t have to be there to experience it.

There is nothing wrong with anyone being out of touch with the current culture. Nothing.  The culture itself made that a crime.  ‘Pay attention to me every day or you are old and lame and a pariah and not worth listening to.” When I was a kid in the eighties, I didn’t give a shit then, either.  I’ve never cared about staying current with anything.  I found it pointless and exhausting.  Shallow and fleeting.  A waste of time.

There’s that phrase again.  A waste of time.  We should always keep an eye on those things in our lives that are a waste of our time.  If there anything more precious? Really?  If I can save some time by deleting Facebook from my phone, and save myself from the venomous fangs of negativity it injects into me, then why wouldn’t I do it?

              I feel as if I could on for another thousand words writing about how this applies to the news as well. Same shit.  I know who sucks already.  I know how to vote in November.  If you feel that you should get involved, then do so.  At the moment, I’m not involved.  I’m doing my small part to battle negativity, which isn’t good for anyone.