This morning, the electricity went out in our neck of the woods, as it quite often does whenever there are high winds around here. Whenever you combine tall trees and high winds you're bound to end up with downed power lines.
We may be living in 2024 and consider these to be "technological times" where such things should never happen, but we take it in stride and expect to be in the dark at least 6-8 times every year, although mostly in the winter.
This time, at least, the power had the decency to go out at 9:30 in the morning during daylight hours so it was possible to do "normal" things using regular daylight!
And I have to say, that I really enjoyed getting my hands on things and doing them, like working on my very "analog" artwork, and going outside (in spite of lingering wind) and in a relatively sheltered area starting to winterize the yard, and later working on sorting my closet of many many things that I still need to sell or donate to the thrift shop.
I even got four items listed for sale on eBay, which made me happy.
While I was busily engaged in these things I got to thinking about how much we spend our time in virtual worlds, these days.
We're either on our phones, or on our computers doing stuff at almost all hours of the day, and for a number of people (at least that I know) it is almost an inconvenience when you have to leave your phone or computer behind to do things such as eating or making your bed or taking a shit, even!
Meanwhile, a large segment of the population seems somewhat baffled by the fact that we have these increasing incidences of depression — and even suicides — among younger individuals, while many are struggling tremendously both to find and then to keep meaningful relationships.
People blame all sorts of things, but here's the thing: we find ourselves growing extremely dependent on getting all these little dopamine hits from our likes on Instagram or views TikTok, and we have completely forgotten that you actually get a much stronger dopamine hit from doing something with your hands and actually accomplishing something tangible, right there in front of you!
When you read a little deeper into that it is also increasingly true that — as a species — we have increasingly become consumers of information and less and less the creators of things.
You might argue that "it's different" if you're part of the blogosphere because you're actually creating something, but that's only partially true, in this context.
Consider how we have even developed anxieties about "missing" a day online; whether you're blogging on Hive or being a YouTuber, there's now this constant fear of becoming obsolete and irrelevant if you're not adding new content and updating virtually every day.
But then that can reveal a secondary anxiety concerning precisely the issue of "how to stay interesting and relevant."
After a some months/years you get to that point of worrying about "what am I going to SAY, that's still worthy and I haven't said before?" I even wrote about that, myself, a while back.
How did our minds change so much? Not as in "point of view," but as in how we approach our lives.
Now, in the interest of "full disclosure," I'm an an Olde Pharte at age 64, so it's not that hard for me to walk away from technology for a while (even days and weeks)... and I often do so, voluntarily. But if you're 30s and younger, it's not so easy because you are — in essence — a "Technological Native." I watch this in our kids, for whom their phones are basically a 5th appendage.
But getting back to the dis-ease so many are feeling, it's a growing problem... and that problem is increasingly "eating its own tail," in the sense that people spend endless hours and days watching YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other self-help and self-improvement vides and shorts in the hope that they might find "the answer" there... and that "answer" is largely that they are glued to the virtual world, looking for answers.
The paradox is that many spend so much time looking for answers, and virtually no time actually creating solutions. And the solution tends to involve hauling your butt out of that seat and applying some of all that wisdom you keep scrolling through. Simply having the information is not enough, you have to apply it.
Actually applying and doing things in physical space is extremely powerful, and it is very different from swimming around in the ocean of tiny dopamine nuggets you can get from clicking buttons on your computer or phone.
I remember from a couple of decades back, when I still had a gallery/gift store, where one of the things we sold was very nice upscale writing instruments, particularly old-fashioned fountain pens.
One of our best customers was a doctor from UT San Antonio Medical Center, and he had literally researched how a completely different part of the human brain was engaged when people wrote on paper with a fountain pen, compared to people typing the same words on a keyboard.
The hand writers engaged the same creative centers in the brain as you would activate when painting a painting, while the typists were basically using the same brain centers as you would use to perform an endlessly repetitive task... like assembly line work.
And this was 20-something years ago when "everything is computerized and online" was still in its relative infancy.
Don't get me wrong, I use the Internet all the time! And I spend time with blogging practically daily. But I don't just consume the information I am getting as an end, I am merely getting something that allows me to be better at something tangible, away from virtual space.
And so, I found myself actually being grateful — on some level — for the power outage!
Thanks for coming by, and have a great rest of your week!
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Created at 2024-09-18 01:55 PST
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