screen time.

I’ve always struggled with writing under circumstances that feel less than ideal (to me). I have a hard time writing in coffee shops and restaurants, on the bus or the train, when I have a few minutes in between meetings or projects. And of course, when I feel zapped of energy (creative or otherwise), it seems impossible. But the fact that these words are on the page right now means that, It’s impossible, is a lie.

I finally listened my way through the Invisibilia podcasts last week/end, and I really loved them. But I particularly can’t stop thinking about the episode about computers and whether they are changing our human-ness. I can’t even remember the context of the line, but at some point, one of the producers acknowledges that in the times we live in, the reality is that most of us spend the majority of our days in front of computers or other screens. And suddenly I realized (with a little horror) that I spend the majority of MY day starting at a computer. My job requires it. And when I’m done with that, I write or do other work on the computer. I’m doing it right now. I don’t know that I feel unequivocally terrible about this, but I feel sort of shocked that it’s only just now dawning on me that most of my waking hours are spent staring into the void of a screen.

Most of my books got packed into a cube and shipped across the country last month, but I brought a small stack with me to Wellfleet, intending to read each one. They were carefully chosen. In the two weeks since we arrived here, I’ve read at best 10 pages, which isn’t really the pace I was aiming for. If I substituted even one hour of screen time each day with one of those books, I would be blowing through that stack. Meanwhile, I have the nerve to think I’m somehow different than the rest of the masses, looking at their computers and tablets and phones.

But oh well. It's Monday, it's rainy, and I'm tired from staring at my screen all day. Every day is the same matter: making the best of the circumstances we're in. And awareness counts for something.