On Being a Casual User of Social Media

So, it took a few months of daily effort to step away from Facebook, and the daily news habit that was its co-morbidity. Peeking at it now and again, I see how my feed has adapted to my absence; see the same folks talking about mostly the same stuff.  I miss the life events, large and small, of people who had become friends, facebook friends, people who edged into the real friends who don’t live nearby category. I contact a few in messenger now and then, and they contact me. But it’s sort of like work or school friendship, that can be real, and intense, but still mostly based on proximity. A few of them had strong reactions to my writing, mostly to the FB writing, but one or two to my fiction. Maybe three.

I had a dozen or so strong supporters, to some degree of my writing, but to a larger degree, people who supported me generally, as a person, in my day to day struggles. I miss them. I think about going back for them. I was this person for a few folks, too, I think, but always, there were others. So you don’t worry too much about stepping away.

One of the many FB is different than meat-space. You don’t feel like you leave a vacuum when you vanish.

I am billing more hours on my less creative contracts, maybe walking more.

I’ve added the FB people I miss to my parents, still, a year after the death of one, two years since the death of the other, Maybe this explains the persistent melancholy. The thousand plus a day COVID deaths and Omicron wave, the end of that feeling that we might get on top of this in a serious way, has also contributed. The death of the dream of a new progressive era caused by a handful of traitorous ‘democrats’, DINOs, also contributes to a sense of loss.

The political stuff, without stimulation, becomes less rage, and more acceptance–or is it resignation?

The serenity prayer. Was I guilty of weirdly empathizing with a team where I was 99.9999 percent a spectator?

I have a friend active in local politics who went from hard working volunteer to a player, in a very large sense, making decisions, or rather, steering a process towards decisions, that matter. A dedicated progressive, much of what she is doing now if preventing a radical left fringe from doing poorly thought out stupid shit. Successfully.

It’s too bad the sane stuff needed to save hundreds of millions of lives over the next few decades, and reduce human misery hugely, can’t get past the bottleneck of bigoted, know-nothing racist vampire capitalist theocratic hypocritical opposition, the monster that the GOP has become. (Yes, I know; only 80-90% of them. Sure. Whatever.)

But here’s the thing. I’m one guy. I’m not the voice of a movement.

I’m at best a footsoldier of a national movement. I’m politically inert lodged in a group of comfortable mostly progressives in Cambridge. (Somerville, Cambridge’s somewhat more affordable neighbor without the prestigious universities, is much more progressive now.) I donate a few thousand bucks of family money to causes, do a little phone banking, and vote. That’s it.

I no longer preach to a choir, any more than I just did, above. A few tweets. No FB posting. I go on much too long on FB. Like somebody standing on a balcony, Mussolini like.

I am, well, I was going to say limping along, on my novel, but maybe that’s just my process. I hope to gather steam on it.

Anyway. It’s 2022. I try not to think of it as the year that the democrats lose all ability to do anything but very temporary executive actions that will be hamstrung by SCOTUS and wiped away by the coming red wave. I will try to think of it as the first year without any one year death anniversaries, a year where my family is strong and healthy, and our own personal circumstances good. A year when I could do a lot of creative work, and bill a lot of hours, and interact with a smallish number of closer friends. While missing some people.

But let that go. Accept the things I cannot change. Be here now, in a less diluted, less agitated state.

Enjoy the time I am given. None of us go on forever.