“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.“
— Viktor Frankl
If you wrote this quote as a formula, it might look like this: S( )R.
(more…)Category: Attention
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S( )R
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What is social media for?
This past weekend, I get a text from a friend asking to send her a picture of myself. I reply jokingly, “you got a man for me,” but I send her a selfie anyway. It’s a selfie another friend took of us back in September. I rarely take selfies; and do what with it? I see my face every morning, night, and in between. Later, I figure I probably came up in a conversation and my friend wanted to show a picture, to say this is the person I’m talking about. Usually, people pull up a person’s social media and say, here this person, but I’m not on social media. Maybe not. She texts me afterwards, “I need you to get on social media,” and I reply, “that will never happen,” followed by laughing emojis. I get to thinking. Will I ever get back on social media?
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Beyonce vs. ChatGPT
There are things one can understand without knowing, but I’ll try to explain myself anyway. Here’s a practical tip to start us off with (because I feel I’ve become too sensitive, overly emotional; my curse and blessing, of being a Cancer, being a woman, being this and that [they said it first, I picked it up afterwards]): I use the SelfControl app to block the “internet” on my laptop— the mindless, time-wasting websites— from Monday thru Saturday. On Sundays, I unblock everything for a short period of time; dedicated time for wasting time. It is just as crucial. My phone is dumb and useless at distracting me. You’re welcome?
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On routine and noticing
Yesterday, the sun was still out at 5:06pm. My weather app showed me earlier that the sun will be setting by 5:34pm, so I knew, but noticing the sun and feeling its last bits of warmth on my skin as I locked the door and walked into the street filled me with hope. I was leaving for the gym, just like I have been doing most Mondays. By December, as the days got shorter and the overhead lights replaced the sun naturally illuminating the workout studio, I knew what was coming. One ordinary day, as I was rushing out my door for class, I realized it was already dark. It filled me with dread and hopelessness; I had no choice but to accept another winter, it’s seemingly endless cold, gloomy, dark days. To self-soothe I complained to anyone who would listen that I couldn’t believe we do this every year, and their knowing nods, understanding words made me feel better; I wasn’t alone.
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Chasing the dragon
Why stop at the wolves?
And I’m just thinking out loud, last minute musings, late night rants, cursing the internet- no, not this internet- for changing so fast, so quick, so suddenly; abandoning me, leaving without warning, and for leaving me no choice but to leave too, and because I only write what I feel like writing about, and sometimes I don’t feel like it until the night before. If it gets hard to follow, maybe it doesn’t make sense, too many grammatical errors, and maybe I may be completely wrong, but in any case thank you for indulging me, and apologies in advance. I need to say it.
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Another year (mostly) spent offline
2022 beat my ass. I aged ten years in two weeks, what did you accomplish? Getting offline won’t save you from yourself, that’s lesson one. Nothing will save your from yourself, except maybe death, but then it won’t matter anyway. In the meantime, getting (mostly) offline has made life much better. Compared to what? I can’t say, but it feels better. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving and I’m excited to see where this journey, this little adventure of mine, will take me. There is no looking back now.
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Kill your phone
I love my smartphone. It’s functional, practical, convenient, and compact; smart too. It connects, entertains, gets me places. There is not a thing I have owned prior, nor in the present and probably in the future, that could claim half of what this tiny device is able to accomplish. I wouldn’t die without a smartphone, granted, but I would miss this tiny miracle if, for one reason or another, it was no longer in my possession.
It began as a love story; the youthful and the new, shiny technology synched together in curiosity, awe, and admiration. The honeymoon phase inevitably came to an end, and the awe and admiration soon turned into resentment. I noticed, despite myself, how the now no longer new, shiny technology, taking little space, fitting snuggly in my hands, controlled so much of my time, attention, life. In the beginning, I enjoyed spending most of my time getting lost in its trance; everyone was there anyway. Then the new became old, the old was lost, and I realized I have made a bad bargain. Despite my best efforts to negotiate, compromise, and at times make threats, the smartphone with its convenient functionality and irresistible distractibility continued to effortlessly invade my attention and occupy all my time.
So, I had to kill it.
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Be careful what you wish for
This past Saturday, I was on the street car on my way to meet a friend. Enjoying a crisp, sunny October afternoon engrossed in my thoughts, it occurred to me I was happy with my life-tech balance. My phone was on dumb-mode, I have spent the morning commuting, reading, and sweating in a FitPop class, and I was now on my way to spend time with a human being, in real time, face to face, and I knew I’d throughly enjoy our time spent together. As I reflected on my day up until that point, which was only 2:00 in the afternoon by then, it felt good how I was effortlessly offline. I felt freed from the years of fight I have put up to take my time, attention, and energy back from the digital noise.
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In a perfect world
I recently got an email from a reader asking, in a perfect world, what does your relationship with technology look like, and I like this question a lot because it gives me the chance to envision, contemplate, and work towards a perfect world in which I don’t feel controlled, oppressed, constrained, manipulated, trapped, undermined, and demeaned by the devices, screens, and notifications of our digital world.
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Capturing the moment
We often interrupt moments with a need to capture it. The reasons are plenty. We want to share the moment with others on social media, with family and friends, and sometimes simply for memory sake. Since quitting social media, my desire to capture moments has mostly gone away. It now feels tedious and pointless to take a picture or a video of an experience; I don’t have a platform to share it on so I don’t bother. Usually, I only capture a moment if I want to share it with someone specific that I know would appreciate it. Otherwise, I try and be in the moment and enjoy it. Somehow, I still have 1,522 videos on my phone.
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“What are you reading?”
(Not about reading)
Kids have a certain kind of straightforwardness, honesty that often comes off as brutal, unnecessarily truthful, and cruel: “Oh my god, I didn’t know you were that old,” they tell me. As we grow, we learn politeness, whether real, phony, bogus: “Oh, please. You are so young,” the adults lie.
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ምሕረት ብሩክ 