Thursday! 2-31: A Life of Choices

Turns out, last week, I tried to be just a tiny bit too clever and got my links all mixed up. Instead of sharing my Patreon link with you, so you could sign up and give me a couple or few dollars a month, I shared a different link — one that didn’t link to my Patreon page. But I want to link to my Patreon page. You might find something useful and supportive to do there!

[Support my art and become a Patron today! Quick, easy, and so very satisfying!]

Now, the good stuff!

Last week, I encouraged you to be more “intentional” about your times of rest and renewal. First, let me say how much I dislike “intentional” because it’s become an overused, fuzzy buzzword to mean a whole bunch of things that usually don’t amount to much more than the health tonic sold from the backs of colorful wagons back in the 1800s.

What I’m talking about, what I’ve talked about before, and what I will continue to talk about from time to time until the heat death of the universe, is choice. A life worth living is a life built on choices and too many of us decide to trade our own choice for someone else’s. In doing so, we allow our vital spark to be less vital, interesting, useful, and fulfilling than we ought. I include myself here without a moment of hesitation (as many of you who have been around Thursday! from its first weeks know quite well) but I don’t mean to criticize myself or you, if you happen to fit the description. It is easy to slip into a life of drifting from obligation to obligation, bumping aimlessly off of various commitments we made because we felt we had to or because we had always done so. Change is difficult, but perhaps not so difficult as we imagine.

The first part of that was the subject of last week’s newsletter. If you haven’t read it, give it a quick look. You know how to find the archive, right? Yes, you do, and you even know you can share the whole shebang!

The second part is what I want to talk about just a little bit this week. I’ve spend the past month or so paring down parts of my life that have felt adrift or “automatic”. That is, I’ve searched out parts of my life where I wasn’t making purposeful choices to do or not do something, and I’ve either cut them out (or pared them back severely) or made a way to choose. Let me give you a few examples that might help you do the same in your life, if you’re up for it.

1. Social media: Oh, baby, do we love social media! Except…do we, really? Think about the last few conversations you’ve had that involved Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Were they good conversations? Did you share something good you got from one of them? Chances are, you did not. I’m willing to bet your last mention of social media was negative — too many ads, a friend’s posts not showing up in your timeline, someone got censored because someone else thought their definition of “disinformation” is the bestest ever and we all should live with it, or….whatever. You get the idea.

Did you need that negativity and control-fetish freakiness in your life? Did it make you feel better the tenth time you checked your phone or browser tab? Did you really need that random current events post from the friend of a friend you followed to be nice but here comes yet another screaming post about whatever issue happens to have the hottest button today? Of course you didn’t, and neither did I. That’s why I cut the list of people I follow as “friends” on Facebook down by more than half. That’s also why I took the Facebook app off my phone. Lastly, it’s why I decided to check the site only through a browser (even on my phone) and only 4 times per day. I treat Facebook much like I treat work e-mail now — I don’t keep it up in the background all day and I check it at certain times, on purpose, and for certain reasons. That last part is important as well. I do not doomscroll. Oh, I used to — on Facebook and Instagram both! Not any more. Doomscrolling is bad for you. Period. Stoppity stop. Do not pass GO. Collect nothing!

Twitter is…a little different. I’m very new there and I feel no special obligation to follow everyone who follows me, even if the new follower is someone I like. Fewer folks in my timeline mean fewer reasons to check the site. But I don’t have the app on my phone either and I won’t, for the same reasons I don’t have FB’s app. No app = fewer temptations to check and scroll and check some more.

I do have Instagram and use it more than the others. I like pictures, what can I say? I also follow some pretty good photographers over there. Still, the ‘Gram’s algorithm, run as it is by Facebook’s evil Zuckerclones, is growing less good for by the day and forcing a decision on me I don’t want to have to make. But I will, just like you will for your social media platforms, because you need to choose your own good and not merely accept the promises of good from people who have no Earthly reason to do good things to or for you.

Lastly, I’ve quietly dropped out of a couple Discord groups to which I’ve belonged. The communities didn’t fit me nearly as well as they once did and, often, I felt like a stranger when I’d visit. Later on, I’ll write a bit about creative communities, because I most definitely have thoughts, but don’t expect anything soon. Those thoughts are a bit complicated and not quite untangled about to make good sense to anyone but me (though they don’t always make great sense to me!).

2. The Quiet Evenings: Because of my wife’s schedule, most of my evenings are empty. Until recently, I’ve filled them with whatever activity seemed best at the time: writing, reading, watching TV, catching up on stuff I’ve recorded on the DVR, playing a computer game, or my own personal go-to — sitting on the couch thinking deeply about all the failures of my past, how I’m not getting nearly far enough ahead in what I wanted for my life, and how I’ll probably end up the pathetic and broken old man stocking shelves late at night at WalMart because all the better opportunities passed him by many years ago. Oh, that really is my favorite, but not because I choose it on purpose. That’s where my mind drifts when I’m alone. It is horrible and I hate when it happens, which is far too often.

My solution is purpose. Most evenings I’m home alone, I choose to do something. I don’t drift into it. I don’t say, “Well, I’m not doing anything else, so I might as well…”. Nope. I pick up a book and say “Five poems” or “Three chapters” or “One hour”. I do a little bit of housecleaning in the 30 minutes before AEW Dynamite comes on (I do love a good wrestling show!). A couple evenings a week, I head down to my church and take part in a Bible study. Oh! Side note! I’m very fortunate to belong to a solid church where folks gather on more days than just Sunday. If you can find one of those places, be part of it! Maybe church isn’t your thing (though I very much would like it do be) but you might find a community center or a library or a local book store that has an evening “thing”. Those things help a lot. You get to pick your thing and you don’t just float.

Choice, right? Choice of internet activity. Choice of evening activity. Living your life on purpose. But, wait! There’s one wrinkle!

3. The Wrinkle of Obligation: As much as we want our whole life composed of choices we make, clearly and with full vision, that’s not quite how the world works, is it? We have things to do that we simply must do: earning a living, family and social obligations that show respect and love to people in our lives who matter, or maintenance work for the communities and organizations that matter to us. Those obligations can jam up our schedules, can knock other things out of our lives for a short time, and can make us feel like we’re simply cogs in a machine over which we have no control.

Except we do, though it may not be the control we most wish. Here’s the thing about choice: acceptance is also a choice. That is, we don’t get to choose every move we make and every activity we undertake each day. Some things we must do. If you have kids, you must feed them and get them to school or sports or church or to bed. You have to (yes, have to) spend time with your beloved. You have to earn a living because, like it or not, we do trade our time for shelter and food and other necessities. You may resist all of them, become miserable, and dream of an impossible utopia or you can accept that being a loved and useful human being means accepting certain encumbrances.

One note, please. Do not refer to your current beloved as an encumbrance. Nothing good will come of it. At all. Ever.

Still, being a person connected in good ways to other people mean you are not always as free as a bird to fly where you will. You get to accept that with a certain amount of gladness and contentment. I don’t always love running my wife to work but I love that I have a wife to run to work. My life would be far, far worse without her. I accept that “must-do” things because they come with…well…her! She’s wonderful! I accept certain horrid things about my job because it gives me a paycheck that allows my wife and me to live in a decent residence and drive a decent car. I am, of course, looking for a better job¹ but I accept the one I have. That is my choice. Acceptance is a choice.

That is about it for this week’s newsletter. I did not choose as much writing this week as I wanted (because of other choices, you see) so there’s nothing more cool to read, but I’ve written quite a lot, don’t you think? What I most want you to take away from this week’s Thursday! isn’t that you must do all the things I do but that choosing is better than drifting. The less of the latter you do, the happier you will be. I’m nowhere near finished all the tweaking and adjusting and choosing I want to do with my life, but I’m better off now than I was and I’ll get better yet. That’s what we’re after, isn’t it? Getting better bit by bit? Let’s work on it together. Drop me a note and tell me what you’re up to! I can’t promise to write back quickly, but I will always read what you send me. So send!

1. Do you know someone who is hiring a writer, an administrative/organizational genius, or a project manager? Send them to me, please!