You’re going to miss out on some things. Trust me. It’s unavoidable. You’ll miss cool shit happening you just didn’t know about, and things that you thought you could do some other time, but never did. You’ll find yourself exhausted, over-committed, distracted, or overcome by circumstances and miss out on some amazing experience. It’s going to happen. There is no preventing it, or planning it away. No amount of scrolling through feeds, or staring blankly into the gaping maw of the internet will prevent you missing out on things. The human experience is just that fucking vast, and even if, somehow, our lifetimes were long enough to do everything, go everywhere, meet everyone; we could never spend that lifetime experiencing what has gone past and is no more. So… get over it. No fear of missing out; you’re going to miss out.

I watched this yesterday. I hope you watch it today.

Reflect on it, if you can hold your own attention long enough to do so.

The way we use the internet is changing who we are. Maybe that’s unavoidable, too. I know I scroll through my feed too many times, too often, too much of the time, and many more times than is required to read what matters to me.

I need to be outside more, out in the trees. I need to be in my garden, and out on the trail. I need to turn the tv off more often, for longer, and silence the background noise for more hours of my day. I have books to read and miles to walk. My “inner voice” has been raising hell about this with me for a while now.

No matter how many times I check for messages, scroll through a feed, read the news, or use the internet to explore or plan life, it’s not time spent living life. I’m not missing out on less by being so “connected” – I’m missing out on more.

Have we had this conversation before? (Probably. It seems likely… this has been on my mind, off and on, since I first noticed a specific change in my cognition and preferences; I now find it hard to choose to watch a movie, and favor much shorter content instead, day-to-day. The linked video really resonated with me, because of this particular change.)

Not one of my most precious memories, or noteworthy experiences, of the past years have been things that “happened” online. Not one. I’m just saying… what is most memorable for me, personally, are moments in life, not online.

Am I who I most want to be, making use of the amazing technology that connects us all, in quite the way I do? Can I do better? What does that look like? What practices would that involve? Is it something to change – or would I be fighting evolution and progress… a curmudgeon… a dinosaur?

First thing this morning, I looked at my Facebook feed before I did anything else. That’s some shit that’s going to stop right now. lol I know. I’ve said as much before, have I not? (I have.) That’s how I know it will need practice, and that there will be verbs involved. It’s time to change – because there are changes I want to make. It’s time to sort out what those need to be.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂