As you know, because you’ve read Why I’m Using Facebook Much Less…Again, I’ve been spitting on mainstream social media. Reviews of two alternatives that interested me as a writer (MeWe and Minds, since mostly Instagram alternatives abound), indicate there were dominated by Trump supporters, owing to more liberal freedom of speech policies. Regardless, I’ve had such an awful experience with social media platforms that I want time away from them.
I reengaged with the Chrome extension ‘Screentime’, although I cheated the first days, switching it off for Facebook and a streaming site. Becoming more intentional, I went on if I had purpose. Thing is, Facebook is relentless in its efforts to engage its “users” and, although I’d stopped most notifications I had no interest in, I started receiving those for friend requests everyday. I successfully, dramatically reduced those with this post, knowing its readers would imagine I was a premadonna/were probably generally incapable of forming complete sentences:
I still encounter time wasters like this one, however:
Example of a time wasting C’UNTry boy
Being Intentional Con’t
Applying intentionality to the streaming site’s use, it became difficult to justify entering because, with nothing specific in mind, the habit of searching for something would result in my settling for anything. So I sit with the feeling, (if I’m mindful enough and it isn’t initially insufferable). The feedback loop of wanting relief through distraction, but insisting upon intent, which frustrates the wanting because it is then for no good reason, can be tiresome. However, this conditional permission does eventually undermine the temptation. One Friday night I rewatched the Ali LeRoi directed The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, (which I really appreciate for its portrayal of intimacy) although I want newness, but there’s so little that’s new and thoughtful, not commercial drivel.
Ideas came to me, during the freed-up time, about promoting my books. I typed them down. I also listened to frequencies purported to “clear energy blocks”, and they put me in a coma. I took a ‘present shower’, that is, a shower in which I made effort to notice my wandering thoughts and return them to focus on the sensations of water striking skin, and I burned incense. More recently, I came across books my brother read as a challenge to himself to complete a certain number in a year, and now Breakfast at Tiffany’s is on an old stool next to my bed.
Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s
By the third day, the screen’s gravity was noticeably weaker.
I realise, in a morning meditation, that I’m avoiding feeling unprotected – a childhood fear, accompanying me into adulthood, ignoring my power of NO!. I stop guided meditations on Youtube and my self-guided ones are better. I’m more attentive. It’s easier to notice when my thoughts wander because I stop talking.
“St. Vincent Smudges Barbados…AGAIN!” Me
Volcanic ash from neighbouring St. Vincent’s La Soufrière drizzled down, blocking out the sun, confusing the birds (which returned to roost) and created a nuclear winter atmosphere. The last time this happened was in 1979, when my mother, seemingly quick to imagine me capable of the worst things, accused me of throwing dirt on the clothes hung on the line in the yard, until she realised I was throwing it on the clothes in everybody else’s yard too.
I gave up exercising the one day per week I’d managed to motivate myself to do so outdoors. However, the clean up was labour intensive and my night sleep, dreamless. It was reminiscent of the farm days in Costa Rica. Resulted in me pondering the difficulty in switching mindsets when your wheels fit the grooves of well-established routine. Six months without internet at the farm, but it was easy because new experiences were my internet and exhaustion heightened my interest in sleep by 8 p.m.
La Soufrière smudges Barbados
From the Ashes….a Superhero
State of my bronchioles
What’s next Mother Nature? Zombies?
Good for the plants, they say. Rose bush under a bucket of volcanic ash.
When a Neighbouring Volcano Spits Ash
Instead of posting about it, I messaged friends on continents to say I was learning to breathe volcanic ash. They were afraid for me, but I was too exhausted from following the ever-changing COVID protocols to feel new fear – the ash only required more mask wearing and staying inside.
I turned to packing up (and dropping in the garbage cans by the gate) the junk from my father’s hoarders’ paradise study. What pleasure this gives me now that age has exacerbated his self-involvement to the point of him not noticing, to then fret about it. It is as if with the boxes go my childish attachments to the expectation that someone called a father is necessarily a father in more than just title. Piles of damp yellow newspapers, freckled in mould, from as far back as the 70s (some shredded into mouse nests) and pamphlets from a lifetime of him parenting meetings, workshops and conferences on education and credit unions. In one box, there was a toad whose story has turned to stone with it.
Father’s Hoarders’ Paradise
The Inexplicable Toad
Where Books come to be Eaten by Silverfish
Cool find (New Strain of Corona)
I left it at the repair shop on Friday because it kept dying without advising it would, and I will be laptopless the entire weekend into next week. I am curiously at ease, though, and cautiously think that if it’s too expensive to repair – considering my dwindling savings – I may try doing without one. You can do everything on your phone anyway.
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