Starting Over

In trying to recover my attention, I've found a lot of that work has been rethinking my relationship to my things and the purpose of them all. I've found that I'm distressed by the layer of the technological over everything. (I really can't stop thinking about this since watching Cronenberg's The Shroud; here's the trailer on YouTube). Primarily, of course, I mean my cellphone and my laptop.

It is hard to reckon with what to do with a small computer in your pocket, but turning off notifications seems to be the simplest, most effective thing to do. I've done that. I've also embraced the email newsletter from news sites I like. I'm not interested in stalking web pages and what I've found is that I would usually channel my boredom into this "surfing." Why? Giving up the routine of visiting websites has been the hardest. Why am I reading these sites I don't care about (Polygon, Kotaku, The Verge, and so on)? I find my attention turning more toward local news as it is anyway and the newsletters have actually been really nice for what the website considers their highlights. Then, I can read more or not. These are also nice to read on my phone rather than scrolling through some social media or what have you.

The laptop is a more difficult device. What is it for? I think about the upcoming redesign of Firefox featuring this "Split View" that has been incorporated in Chrome and, I think, first came in Arc. The vision of the Chromebook, really, the transformation of a full blooded computer into a browser-machine; the prevalence of web apps; iCloud and others like it. I want none of these things and I have no use of them. I've turned split view off in Firefox.¹ What is my laptop for? There are some requirements of modernity—yes, I need to have access to a browser; yes, I need to have access to email—but what am I using it for?

I have been feeling an increasingly irrepressible urge to write. In another life I would call myself a writer...that is an untenable thought. Why another life? So much of media, from video games to television to novels, has become so tasteless. I tire of it, but no longer have a consumerist (to be bleak) outlet; no longer fulfillment from seeing works. The Odyssey was strikingly triumphant as more than just a spectacular blockbuster. I want that all the time. Anyway, what does that have to do with me turning myself into a writer? I feel like it is the only path forward. That's what I need to use my computer for.

Anyway, a lot of this to say that I've picked up a copy of The Artist's Way and am looking forward to some structure. I don't know if I'll be transformed by it, but I need something structured to bring me into any practice at all with writing.

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Footnotes

1. user_pref("browser.tabs.splitView.enabled", false); ↩