The Thursday! Newsletter: 1-35: Live Without the Yelling
Volume 1, Issue 35
I'm going to rant a bit, if you don't mind.
Normally, I try very hard to be helpful and nice and talk about creativity, but once in a while I don't feel any of those things. Once in a while I feel like leaning into the "life" part of the banner up there. Today's one of those days.
I'm tired of being yelled at. I'm even more tired of what all the yelling is doing to my friends. The yelling isn't all angry, by the way. Sometimes people yell at you because they want to tell you something; or preach at you; or sell you their car insurance, political cause, marketing course, or club. They want your money. They want your attention. They want you to be angry or frightened or lonely. They want you to need.
Because they have just the thing to meet that need.
The television doesn't shut up. The internet doesn't shut up. The city doesn't shut up. There is no time when stores just close and everyone goes home, turns out the lights, calms the heck down, and gets quiet. Remember the amazing scene from the movie Poltergeist? The national anthem plays, late at night. The station is going off the air until the morning. The final chord rings out and -- BAM! -- static. In that static something lurks,
Not today, though. You won't get haunted through a test pattern because hardly anyone remembers what they are anymore. You certainly won't see one as a matter of course on your television. Static either. The television doesn't shut up. And if your cable goes out, just fire up a streaming network because they don't shut up either. Or grab your phone and visit Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Discord or Gab or Parler or MeWe or Slack or Pinterest or YouTube or Vimeo and just scroll. Someone's always there. Lots of someone are always there. That's how they're built. The designers know we are social animals and we need contact like a hummingbird needs delicious hummingbird food and they have built engines to feed that need.
Or overfeed it.
That overfeeding is messing us up, whether we want to admit it or not. But I think we know it. We're growing dull and anxious and irritable. We can't sleep. We worry about things we can't possibly control because all the people in the boxes told us about all the horrible things that are happening, at least some of which is most definitely our fault. Aren't we horrible? We'd better give some money or volunteer our time or scold our neighbors or rat out our family members. Or maybe we're better off if we just click over to that new television show with the attractive woman playing a small herd of attractive men for chumps or the attractive man playing the group of attractive women for strumpets. How about that new superhero movie? You know the one. The hero isn't very heroic but the special effects are really cool and the sounds are loud. Hear that BROMMMMM? Yeah! If you don't like that one, wait for the next one. It'll be a lot like the last one but a little different so maybe you'll like it.
Or not. Who cares? You watched it. The studio gets its money. Done and done.
If we manage to sit quietly for a few minutes, well here comes the DING of the text notification from our boss at work. something to do. And an e-mail, too! Better get to that. Never you mind that it's 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening. It'll just take a minute or 30 or 60. Eh. Shrug it off. Except it's not so easy to settle back in, now is it? Better find something on the television or, better yet, open Facebook. We have the phone out anyhow. A little scrolling won't hurt.
Meanwhile we wonder why, when we sit down to create something new and wonderful and delicate and unique, we can't manage it. We wonder why our brains won't shut up when the lights are (kind of) off and we're supposed to be sleeping. We wonder why we seem to be flinching all the time when we open the same apps we open a dozen times a day, every day. We wonder why it seems like we're all alone in a very crowded world, why we can't quite connect with people we very much want to connect with. We wonder why our brain won't calm itself, why it feels like a little worry-rat is just gnawing away inside our heads. We wonder why we can't quite catch our breath.
We have no time to rest. Our brain can't slow down long enough to digest everything it's taken in. We can't be the creative wonders we want to be -- the wonders we were created to be -- because our poor brains haven't had enough time to slow down and chew on everything we've stuffed into it. My friends, we are not meant to be always on. We are meant for down time and for rest as much as we are meant for activity and attention and noise. We are cyclical creatures. We are meant to rise and to settle. We have a natural rhythm and we get very ill if we stay out of it for long (says the guy who worked 10 years of shift work).
We tend to use hamsters running on a wheel as an analogy for our modern lifestyle but that doesn't work. You know why? A hamster will get off the wheel sometimes and rest.
We need to get off the wheel, too. You don't have to do all the things. You don't have to run yourself ragged and stuff your calendar like an overnight bag you're trying to pack for a month's vacation. You don't have to listen to the panic-screamers and the doomscroll merchants and the advertisers. You don't have to listen to the sticky-pants hustle marketers who say you must go go go day and night. You don't have to listen to the fat-faced manager in the Willoughby episode of The Twilight Zone.
I know we can't go back to days when towns rolled up at 8:30 and televisions went off at midnight. We probably don't want to go back to that world. Honestly, I like that I can grab a Diet Coke Orange at WaWa at midnight after a long week. Conveniences are nice and an "always open and always on" world is very convenient indeed. But. Let's not turn convenience into obligation. let's not turn the opportunity we have to do anything and everything into a requirement. Just because everyone can talk to us does not mean we must listen. We're allowed to get off the wheel.
I'm going to say something that my sound quite selfish, but we do not exist to serve the world. That doesn't mean the world exists to serve us either, but there is a middle ground. We are allowed to choose how much of the world we let in as a matter of routine. We are allowed to set our schedule in a way that serves us. That might mean we have to end something we like because it's simply taking up too much time and costing us too much in energy and emotion. Maybe it's driving us a little bit crazy but we feel we must keep on because of reasons that don't much involve our free choice anymore. Maybe we feel stuck.
It's okay. We can let it go. You are allowed to pick what you do and how you do it before it drives you crazy. You're allowed to opt out of the endless binge. You're allowed to dip in and take what you wish and not all that is there simply because it is there or because you feel obligated. You are allowed to live on purpose.
It's okay. We're okay.
We can live without everything all the time. We can live without the yelling.
It'll be good for us. Let's try it and see.
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What I Wrote and Read Last Week
"The Click Hunt" is a zombie hunt with a very different zombie.
"The Skull, the Claw, and the Door" is the story I mentioned in the essay, the sequel to "There are 216 Steps to the Top of the Lighthouse".
I was on the Funny Science Fiction Podcast a couple of months ago. The interview is now up and ready for your hungry, hungry eyes! I'd love to know what you think.
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One Last Thing
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