I didn't have a cell phone until 2005. I didn't want one, I didn't desire the invasiveness they presented in my life.
Hurricane Wilma changed that. She was supposed to miss us, did miss us...until she didn't. She back tracked across Florida and dropped a tornado on our condo complex. The roof of the adjacent building was ripped off, thrown across the pool and slammed into the unprotected unit we were in.
When all was said and done, there was a 10 foot hole in our bedroom ceiling and everything was lost. My wife insisted that I get a cell phone then, and I couldn't really fight it anymore.
I had spent years on the road without one, now I had to get that red flip phone and be available 24/7. I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't know how bad.
I am a technology addict, and information addict. I can spend hours in front of a computer making music. Those hours turn into days and I lose track of time. What I think is 20 minutes is five hours. I get lost in the creative process.
When everyone laughed at me and told me I needed a smart phone I pushed back.
These devices are not meant to create, they are meant to consume. Sure, there is the pretense that they're creative devices. Your next selfie or workout video is a creation, I guess you could argue. Perhaps it is. For me, this has never proven to be true.
I have come to an agreement with the iphone. We have to co-exist. Shit, I even bought an old blackberry to try and remove myself from the smartphone land. It turns out that when you build an online presence through the device, it requires constant upkeep. Like a plant, if it's not watered and turned it will die.
I warned my wife that if I got the iphone, it was game over. No going back. I would be buried in it. I was told I needed it. It's a needed tool. Ok then, down the rabbit hole we go.
What's the first thing you did this morning? What's the last thing you did last night? For me it was look at my phone. It is a horrible practice, one that I've been fighting to break for what seems like ages. I delete the Facebook app, then find myself on safari logging in mindlessly to scroll the doom, the hilarity, the vast emptiness that is communicating with people I have never met or have not seen in decades.
Perhaps this is a side effect of 2020, this vast emptiness, this search for something else. It has increased, this usage, as I look at death statistics and the political theater of this pandemic. It does nothing for me, other than make me feel...informed? Maybe.
Damn, I don't want it. I want to create, not consume. I want to make albums and write books and blogs and film workout & write nutrition programs that change peoples lives.
I guess that means playing with fire, walking the razor's edge that is IG & FB addiction and trying not to become that which I loathe. The influencers that in turns make me laugh and drive me crazy (not the good kind). It also means pruning the tree of 'things', removing the shit that the algorithm thinks will drive you to consume.
Ok, it's time to do the real things, to create, to help, to raise all boats.