I Was Waiting For This

I figured this was coming. This morning Facebook's "On This Day" feature showed me a post I wrote two years ago that reminded me of one of the darkest days of my life. I'm not sharing the original post because I don't need to revive it. Those of you who were here then may recall it, but by now the details are unimportant. A couple of things do seem worth noting about it, though. One is that from the two-years-out view, the cause behind the post is entirely irrelevant today, a shrinking-to-near-invisibility dot on the freeway behind me. A connection that at one time occupied the center of my attention now barely registers, hardly moves the needle. For that I can only say, "Thank [deities] and good riddance," and that is all that needs to be said. Another is that even though I was in a place beyond the darkest darkness I could imagine, I called on the power of the dozens of you who stepped in and propped me up that day, and showed me by your examples that I would survive to see dawn again. My gratitude to all of you will never cease; that's always true, but it was especially true in those moments. A couple of comments stand out in particular. In her hope-filled narrative, my dear friend Lori pointed out that "those who have wounded us are the agents of blessed change" and that we become "stronger, wiser, and better for the pain." While I would not have wished any of it on myself nor anyone else, nor do I ever wish to experience it again, both of those insights have been borne out. I survived, I leapt, I landed, and I'm exactly where I need and want to be. I'm very happy; I'm even Thriving (tm) ;) I did some deliberate and careful pruning of things that were no longer serving me, formed new friendships and honed existing ones, and came home in a way that I hadn't been in decades. Deep wounds often trigger a desire for justice and even revenge, and Lori also pointed out that "Time wounds all heels." I clung tightly to that hope two years ago, but I'm delighted to say that from where I stand now, I no longer care whether that's the case. It simply doesn't matter. Luckiest Woman On The Planet is very, very grateful.

Same Sh*t, Different Day

I had a different post in the pipeline, an introspective musing on the arrival of autumn weather and the things I look forward to this particular fall. It wasn't coming together (I'm sure it will) but LWOTP woke up angry this morning. This post asked to be given a hearing and did me the courtesy of nearly writing itself.

This New Yorker article was written three years ago, and of course it could easily have been written yesterday because NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Go ahead, give it a read and tell me you don't recognize the echoes of the past week, the past six months, the past three years and beyond.

The Simple Truth About Gun Control

Sometimes satire has the most to offer in unbelievably awful situations. Here's the article The Onion has run each of the last three times one of these events has occurred. Different dateline, same wrenching story.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

I'm angry and I'm tired of having the same conversations over and over and over after yet another mass shooting. I'm tired of hearing people clinging to their weapons when we know that the likelihood they will ever actually need to use them against another human being – truly need to use them to protect themselves or their families – is vanishingly close to zero. We KNOW what we need to to do stop this insane loss of life. Don't BS me about "prayers for the families" and "but it's too early to talk about the causes." It's not. We KNOW what the causes are, and we KNOW how to fix this. Just as surely as antibiotics work on bacterial infections, sane gun laws would dramatically decrease the horrendous loss of life that we alone among developed  nations seem willing to tolerate, time and time again, all in the name of a misguided (and very recent and self-serving) interpretation of a centuries-old “right”.

BUT BUT BUT!!! WHAT ABOUT THE GUBMINT!!! THEY WANNA TAKE AWAY MAH GUNZ!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!!

Know where else the odds are vanishingly close to zero? The odds of our government coming to take away everyone's guns. If you honestly believe that paranoid, irrational, costly delusion – if you really think there's a government agenda that would come after your precious firearms, and that clinging to that delusion is worth the horrendous cost in human lives – go ahead and unfriend me. Now. Seriously. Walk out. Drop me a note before you go if you'd like to, but go. Because YOU are the kernel, the source, the core of this problem. YOU are the reason the NRA knows it can buy our politicians with impunity. YOU are the reason they can continue to obstruct any and all attempts to pass sane gun legislation or even study the public health effects of gun violence.

And if you go, as you go, take a moment to ask yourself: Are tens of thousands of human lives really that expendable? Is it really worth that cost, just so you can let others keep controlling you and feeding your fear?

I don't have all the answers. I don't know what I can practically do. But I do know how I plan to make decisions about how I vote and which candidates I will support. When I know more, I will do more. This much I do know: it's time to say "enough".

It's Complicated...

I have a complicated relationship with Facebook. As a vehicle for renewing contacts and staying in touch with faraway friends and colleagues, it’s unequalled. I can’t picture how or even whether I’d have moved back to California (through a series of wheels that began turning in 2011) if it weren’t for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild allowed me to retrieve the social capital I needed to move back to my homeland after 38 years away, and it was the mechanism that connected me with the gentleman. Facebook helps me feel connected even when I’m alone. I’ve received some of the warmest support of my life by sharing the best of times with all of you, and you have walked me through the very darkest of times, all via social media.

And yet…

Part of my conundrum is related to my innate preference to flop down on the sofa with my nose stuck in a book. I love to slurp up information and I always have, ever since I learned to read at the age of 3 (my first book was “The Little Red Hen” and my father was my teacher – thanks, Daddy!) I’m format agnostic; paper, Kindle, computer screen – it matters not. As often as not, though, lately my reading takes the form of whiling away hours refreshing my news feed and clicking on links, and I’m not reading nearly as many books (or anything else) as I used to.

But also, at least to my eye, Facebook seems to have changed. I get it about “monetizing” and algorithms and blah blah blah, even though I can’t outline them or tell you what they are. But Facebook is basically an advertising-driven business whose primary objective is NOT about keeping us in contact with each other, but instead is about driving our eyeballs over to advertisers’ pages. So now, instead of a news feed filled with friends’ activities, here’s what I see:

1) interest- and agenda-driven posts (in fact, I seem to get much of my breaking news from Facebook). Now those, I have a little control over and it’s been interesting to see how my news feed has changed as I’ve been “Unfollowing” and “Unliking” pages over the past couple of weeks. I’ve become a lot more selective about what pages and groups I follow.

I also see 2) meaningless click-bait quizzes (What Color Unicorn Did You Used To Be?) and engagement-bait posts (CONTROVERSIAL ASSERTION! YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTAIN YOURSELF! WHAT DO YOU THINK?) I can’t control all of these, but I ignore what I can. Don’t take it personally; I just don’t care to put extraneous personal information out into the cloud-o-sphere if I can avoid it. Silly me, I also like to believe that I can still think for myself and not get taken in by something that’s purely about getting me to click over to a page, and not about conveying meaningful, useful information.

There are also 3) many cute or controversial videos that I seldom click through. I already feel like I’m spending too much time on Facebook and I don’t want to add to the burden; a minute-forty-five here and three minutes there can really add up!

And finally, I see 4) a lot of hatred, and this I DO have control over. I’m all in favor of respectful discussions between people who hold opposing views, and I can always expand my own world view, but life is too damn short to tolerate the flat-out abuse, hatred, judgment, and disrespect that I sometimes see flowing through the pixels. I’ve become a lot freer with the “Block” option and I’m not a bit sorry about it. Enough said.

I also don’t post nearly as much as I used to. I think that’s partly a function of where I am in life, partly about who’s in my life (and who’s not), and partly a function of simply having less time to spend on it. I still have plenty to say, but I don’t have time to squander. I have a job that harvests much more of my attention and energy than the one I left last year, and I won’t log into Facebook using my work computer. I also have a committed partner now (who, interestingly enough, is Not. On. Facebook very much if at all – hmmmm…) so staring at a computer screen is no longer my primary option for human contact. Spending an evening in a real-time conversation or movie-watching with a live human being is pretty nice!

So in the spirit of exploring and adjusting how I spend my time, I’ve 86’d the Facebook app from my phone, but kept the messenger app. They seem different to me and the messenger app rarely, if ever, prevents me from participating in my real life the way the Facebook app did. I know it means no more check-ins and no more on-the-fly photos, and I’m okay with that. I’m keeping my account, not going away, but I’ll be looking more carefully at, and aiming to be much more intentional about, how much time I spend on Facebook.

I didn’t turn this into a status update (except to post the link to this post) because I don’t figure it’s front-page news to anyone except me and possibly the gentleman. My hope, though, is that I can attain a new, heathier-for-me balance with social media while still staying in touch with the people I care about (I’m lookin’ at you!) We’ll see how the experiment turns out.

Do you have any thoughts or ideas?