skynsemi

Ten years ago, there were fights across America between those who wanted to deprive their fellow Americans of healthcare, and those who were fighting to pass something that would improve the situation we had, even a little bit. With a country bitterly divided, everyone was arguing about what role the government should play in the healthcare of the United States.

Congressional representatives held town halls all over the country. Despite the arguments that the bill was “crammed down the throats” of the populace, it was heavily debated. One of the most memorable town halls that comes to my mind every so often is the one hosted by then Massachusetts representative Barney Frank. Frank, an openly gay House representative, already faced animosity from the conservative side of the aisle.

The big take away in his “conversation” with this constituent was that he couldn’t have a reasonable conversation with her, and it would have been like arguing with a dining room table. He was probably right in this response. The reality is that someone that entrenched in their beliefs, a picture of President Obama defaced to look like Hitler in hand, has little chance of being swayed by a town hall. Her mind was made up, no one was changing it, and yet there was a demand for some kind of dialogue; she wasn’t looking for a dialogue, she was looking for a soap box to stand on.

This conversation in a town in Massachusetts a decade ago wasn’t an aberration. It was a prelude of what was to come. With the rise of “social media” which has become distribution to billions of people, everyone is in the conversation.

Side Note: Social Media is sort of a misnomer. The Internet has always been social. Facebook and Twitter didn’t invent discussion on the Internet, as much as you call what happens there “discussion”. They simplified it to the level that anyone with any opinion can speak, whether that opinion is based on facts, feelings, or dogma.

All of this has gotten me to thinking more about social media usage in general, and what I want to get out of social media. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or any similar platform, what am I trying to achieve and how I can make myself not feel like total crap when I use these systems.

I want to connect to people. I want to engage. I want to have conversations that are meaningful. However, it has become abundantly clear to me that trying to have a conversation with anyone outside my direct circle of friends & acquaintances is like pissing in the wind. No one is changing their minds on Facebook. No one is having an epiphany. I see phrases like “get off my Facebook page” or “I wasn’t asking for the comment with you, I just wanted to comment my opinion.”

On the other hand, there are friends on Facebook I want to interact with. I want to know about their latest goings-on with their families, their photos of their food, what games they are playing, and what they think about the latest doggo memes.

More importantly, I’ve begun to think about my goals as it relates to what I really want to do. I want to learn more about topics in depth, I want to focus on drawing, long form writing, reading more, gaming, streaming, and creating.

I always feel like I don’t have time to do these things, so then I started looking at where my time was going. Someone asked me, “what did you do on your day off” and the answer was “hrm… I don’t know.” That was a sign something was amiss. Surely I did something? So I looked at my screen time usage, a feature Apple provides that aggregates your usage of applications and devices into an easy-to-read chart.

The result? I spent, on average, over an hour a day in the Facebook application alone. Basically scrolling. Wasting time, not accomplishing the things I want to accomplish, and just dicking around. Usually I just end up angry, going into comments and steaming over racists, homophobes, and ideologues who are just there to… wait for it… make me angry. That’s all they care about, making people angry. They feed on it like parasites, mini-Palpatine wannabes absorbing the hate of others around them to fuel their own bitter selves.

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I decided things needed to change. I wanted to set some specific goals to go after. I want to reduce my exposure to toxicity that serves no purpose, to further my knowledge, and to engage others in a meaningful way instead of the current sniping from comment sections everyone seems to do.

I created this blog as a way to channel my creativity in a constructive way. Something that would let me have a vehicle of expression that was built around long-form writing. I’m still going to be writing fitness and health related posts over on my Untamed Phoenix blog, but this is more for anything not in that realm.

My baseline goals (these are minimums I want to do) are…

• Write 2 blog posts per week
• Write for 1 hour a week minimum on something creative
• Read 1 book per month
• Practice drawing for at least 15 minutes a day
• Keep the house clean
• Keep my fitness blog updated with new videos weekly
• Pick 1 current events topic to understand weekly
• Play more video games

To help facilitate this, I’ve taken the following steps…

• Set up Goodreads to track my reading
• Used system controls to limit Instagram usage to 15 minutes per day
• Deleted the Facebook app from my phone
• Created a list of “Close Friends” on Facebook, and I will use that list to read Facebook instead of the general wall full of chaos
• Trimmed my Twitter followed people to people I really care about
• Set up a notes system to track all my notes, recipes, etc.

So aside from whatever is above, what will be on this blog? Honestly, anything that strikes me. It could be the weekly current events topic I’ve chosen to read on, some memes, or some random site I found interesting; the thing I want to do is provide a more long-form write up on what I am reading vs. just “hey look at this stupid thing I found”, because then I can flex my creative muscles more.

So I know this initial post was probably way too long for what it is, but is was an attempt for me to mentally think about my goals and share some actionable steps I am taking to improve my online life; maybe one or two of these might be useful to someone and I might expand upon them in later posts as well.