Did You Notice?

Let’s see if I can express myself well in this blog post. I know as I sit down to write this that I will be challenged in my ability to express this abstract experience with this page and the words I choose to express myself with.

Let’s start with the idea of connecting dots. Faithful readers know I use this idea a lot. But it helps make connections to ideas or moments, even when they seem random.

Dot One

Did you notice? 

Did you notice I was not there on social media, especially X? It is OK if you didn’t. I’m not sure anyone really did. My screen time is averaging 2 hours and 50 minutes a day for the last couple of weeks (at the end of this week it should be about 2 hours and 40 minutes).

At the moment, X is my 8th used app. It is even behind my Clock app. I did not disappear, I reposted, shared some info, but I didn’t really engage with people or share original content. And X went on without me.

Dot Two

Why I reduced my interaction with my phone and social media.

This is one of the tricky parts I alluded to in the introduction. I was hurt because of poetry. Rejection emails, poetry battles, and the loss of community hit my spirit hard. Every creative person goes through rough spots, the last three weeks have been brutal for me, in so many different ways. Emotionally it was like standing in the middle of a downpour as a blizzard swept in while an earthquake happened.

Dot Three

What did I gain from the last two weeks?

New Poetry. Ironic isn’t it. 

I also gained an appreciation for my voice, for my style. It sounds funny to say this at this stage of my writing career, but I am always reminded of something Ray Radbury said in an interview late in his career. He said it took him 10 years to finally write a short story that he felt reflected his authentic voice.

I may not be popular, but no one writes like I do. 

And I will keep trying to share my work, knowing that my email folder will be filled with rejection responses because that’s what we do, we create and share with the world.

Dot Four

What I really gained from the last two weeks…

The depth and quality of our life is found in how engaged we are in our own lives.

I read the article “The Lonely Death of George Bell” from the New York Times in 2015. (It is behind a paywall now.) It haunts me to this day. The quick summary of the article is that George dies in his apartment alone, and it took weeks before anyone noticed enough to investigate. Even his drinking buddies, whom he saw only at the bar, did not do anything when he stopped showing up. 

We all get 24 hours in a day. And we, for the most part, get to decide what we do with that time. I’ve talked about this idea in different blog posts for years and connected to different topics. The small shift in understanding from the last two weeks is that how we engage with that time matters.

I didn’t stop living just because I was not on X. Dadlife has been in full swing, daughters are in tennis, and my third daughter was also in the school musical. I took my walks. I wrote poetry.

Twenty-four hours can go by without us doing anything, even if we are on a screen or not. Being aware, but even more importantly, choosing what and who to engage with builds the textures of our life. Gives us the colors, the heartache, and the words to live a life we can call art.