I write. I have friends and associates who write. I read. I read less than I’d like, managing to read rather a lot, anyway. I don’t read as many books, as often, as I’d like to. I read more repeats of new articles I’ve already read than I would prefer.
…Did I mention I have friends who write? I’m not talking about unedited grammatically challenged stream-of-consciousness rants lacking factual basis, theme, or novel content. I have friends who write deeply, in a nuanced, fluent fashion. Friends who think deeply. Who consider life in the context of what they understand of the world. Thinkers. Artists. Creators. Scientists. Musicians. Actors. Librarians. Great content written by people I personally also consider to have great minds. So… why am I not reading more of that? How fucking rude. I know, for a fact, that several of them read my writing.
…Where is the reciprocity?
I frown and sip my coffee. I think about the accessibility of great writing, great conversation, and great thought. I think about the ways in which we are now drowning in more data than any one human being can consume or comprehend. Choices are needed. A method. A way to filter out the noise.
In the digital age, the great writing of friends and associates gets buried in my feed. Instead of being a conversation among friends, wits, and intellects, attempting to be “well-read” has become more like being seated in a crowded diner, than talking together intimately over coffee. The demands for my attention, likes, clicks, and views has some diner-like qualities, intensified and made surreal. Imagine the waiter coming around insisting that I review the menu, yet again, while touting various recipes as cures for this or that – every 5 sentences or so. Strangers interrupt the conversation because they think one of us looks like someone they know, but start a lengthy conversation about how mistaken they are – in spite of not knowing me or the person with who I am attempting to converse. Passersby might interject how they’ve overheard something “just like that” this one time… or something totally different, in spite of not being asked an opinion. Each attempt to connect and develop a deeper conversation is interrupted – by salespeople, by the demands of strangers, by peculiar marketing. Uninvited extras. Distractions. “Reminders”. Notifications. So much continuous “communication” that we don’t even talk about “reading the news” so much as “checking our feeds”. Obnoxious.
The density of incoming “information” is a distraction from the things I want most to be informed by. š¦ How to resolve that? I wonder about it as I sit over my coffee… writing. The thread of what is most important (to me) frays, breaks, is lost… How do I regain that thread?
I have a moment of clarity. (Nice start to the morning.) Unsubscribe from trivial bullshit, marketing, and things I don’t want to be bothered with. No guilt, no excuses – what matters most to me , matters most (in this instance). Then? Subscribe to the writings of the writers I most want to read, directly, such that those are things coming to my email inbox, instead of marketing bullshit from retailers I happened to have purchased something from, once. Wow. That seems too easy…
Read what matters most. Reconnect. Is it that easy to take back my time and consciousness? I guess I’ll find out…
It’s time to begin again. š
Evening Light 