The Floor

C’mon now, let’s be honest. The internet is doo-doo now, nobody cares about blog writing by some middle-aged white man rando, and that’s ok.

There, I said it. First, to myself, and now to you.

I’ve dragged ass on writing and posting while wrestling with the point of doing so for a long eleven months since I last posted here, but now, my arrival at acceptance of the oversaturation and enshitification of everything is setting me free from expecting it to be otherwise, and I can just write and post for the pleasure of doing so, no means to an end, no expectations. I can post drafts, and edit them when I feel like it. Eff it, who cares. A few readers is enough. One is enough, even if that one is me.

Funny thing about my fifties: Every time I think I have surely purged my last give-a-shit and have reached optimum mid-life freedom from self-limitation, the universe unlocks a new level and I discover that my already subterranean give-a-shit floor can drop even lower, and I marvel at how much more there is to not give a shit about. Behold ye this blight: my field of shits grows more barren by the day, and my yield affords me none to spare.

Right after my last post on this blog, in September of last year, I broke up with the internet. I had some bad experiences on it that messed me up for a while (more on that at another time) and I began to awaken to the generalized degradation of this formerly generative resource and the culture of discourse it has fostered. I took a pretty long, semi-committed break from the optional parts of the web and other information technologies. I switched to a less corporate web browser and email provider. I dropped/changed social media profiles and pared down my friends and followers. I retired my smartphone and started using a flip phone. For reasons I'm still discovering, this felt like a radical move, despite living the vast majority of my formative decades without any of this tech.

In the absence of an attention-thieving-pocket-robot, I experimented with looking up and around and observing my physical surroundings. I people-watched. I looked at the ridges in my fingernails and the lines on my hands. I went the frick outside. I hummed and sang to myself. I talked to people face to face and I read paper books. It was simultaneously hard and so, so easy. The dial on my nervous system seem to glide more smoothly, no longer locked in the "max" position. I didn't become Caveman Hezekiah Luddite or anything, but I did find that I gradually acclimated to the FO of all that MO that was supposedly so dire.

It turns out that it’s not so mandatory to have access to the web 24-7. It turns out that less access to “information” is not necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on what information we’re talking about. If you’re willing to accept some extra steps to access the specific data you seek, you may determine that it’s not that important, that the immediacy of the tech, it turns out, is the allure, not the content itself. The paradox of freedom is that more choice equals more analysis, which results in more stress and fatigue. For the bazillionth time, I am observing that just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

*****************************************************************************

It's summer, and I've been having the thought that summers used to really be something.

I remember the soles of my bare feet making first contact with the warming concrete and the brick of early morning front steps felt like plugging in to a charger for energy that I stored in my legs and spent the whole day burning up. It radiated up past my ankles, into my thighs, groin and middle, and onward, undeterred by waistbands, cuffs or collars, my whole body vibrating with green-orange, vibrant alertness, the warm scents and radio songs and sights rich with promise and sensation. I was crazy with youthful, boy-dog aliveness and I wanted to hump the sun.

But now, summer is something else.

In this, what Carl Jung called “the afternoon of life”, I endure summer with melancholy, as a vague, faded photograph, as a picturesque paper label on a container that no longer contains the stuff- just the residue. Experiencing summers in my fifties feel like I’m watching new condos built atop a familiar site, whose memories hover in the vicinity with nowhere to land. It's unfamiliar, not the same.

But then again, I’m also getting so tired of reflecting, remembering. I really don’t want to spend the rest of my days lamenting that things don’t feel like the past. So, I’m trying to find my way back to a summer that feels alive, that feels like now. If I’m no longer hormonally or temperamentally inclined to hump the sun, perhaps I might entice it to cuddle?

I’m unplugging from some outdated sources (the aforementioned, enshitified internet) and back into more local outlets (IRL experience). I’m curious if unplugging might turn out to be the new connectedness. But I think I can, for now, give this blog another try. I remember when the internet connected us, and I'm going to see if that's still possible in some present day form. It seems folks are craving some simplicity.

My commitment to myself (and if you find value in this, to you) is that I’m gonna write, and focusing more on the writing, less on editing posts to perfection and promoting to gain readers. That was unfun. I'm gonna keep it shorter: Whatever I can write on a particular day is enough. Whomever shows up is enough. If you’re reading this, you are enough. I’m glad you’re here. Every point of contact with each other in this isolating and dispiriting world is a revolutionary act, so anything that happens here is a little drink of water in a dry-ass desert and is worth doing. As always, I love your feedback and responses to what I post- you can do so publicly or contact me privately. Your responses help me to keep going, to know it’s landing somewhere.

Thanks for giving a shit.