Look! It's Me! (Or Don't Look... It's Still Me)

I turned 48 one month ago, and I've been posting a selfie every day since. It wasn't something I planned ahead of time, it's not something I've vowed to continue for any specific period of time, and it isn't something I've talked about. It started on a whim (if you go back, you'll see that Day 1 isn't even titled as such) and will only continue as long as I feel like doing it. But there IS a purpose behind it...

Even though I'm posting these dailies on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, I'm not doing it to get likes, comments, or even views. It doesn't matter to me if anyone out there thinks I look good, thinks I look stupid, or thinks I have too much time on my hands. What motivates me is a desire to be mindful... of me.

I've noticed (as I'm sure we all do) that, as I get older, time seems to slip away faster and faster. Fewer and fewer momentous or memorable occasions mark the calendar of my life, and the time between them becomes a blur of work, evening sitcoms, and begrudgingly executed chores (aka "being an adult"). Where summer break as a kid seemed to last forever, it now feels like I go from pulling out the lawn mower to putting on my winter tires in the blink of an eye. I remember a time when I proudly declared being "9-and-a-half years old". Now I have to check the year and do the math to know how old I am, because those numbers just keep changing so damn quickly.

So, these one-a-day pictures are a way of forcing myself to slow down, take notice, and create a memory for myself. It doesn't need to be anything major. It doesn't need to be life-changing. It just needs to be something that I put some conscious thought into. Something that made me stop, look around, and say, "THIS is what I'll choose to remember about today."

And that's it. I'm sorry if you get tired of seeing my mug on your phone or computer screen. Until I get tired of it, those selfies are gonna keep on comin'.

It's All About Me

The most difficult part about social media, for me, is finding the motivation to keep going. I think that's because my motivation is directly tied to feedback, of which I get very little.

When I started this blog, way back in 2003, there were a lot of other bloggers out there. You could spend quite a bit of time reading great material from great writers. At the same time, your own words were hitting more eyeballs and comments were common. I'm not going to lie and say that I had amazing interaction back then either, but I certainly had a lot more than I do now. I get it... Social media has evolved away from the long format of a blog, and towards whatever you'd call the visual equivalent of soundbites (sight bites?). If you try to communicate with the mere written word today, you've got about 1 minute to do it before your audience moves on to something easier to consume.

As we moved into the Facebook / Twitter / Google+ era, I tried to adapt. I shared links to things I thought were interesting, but no one else seemed to think they were. I crafted short, witty, often off-the-wall comments, but my sense of humor didn't seem to translate well. I asked what I perceived to be thought-provoking questions, only to receive silence in return. If I'm honest, it was quite demoralizing. There I was, swimming in a sea of social media where people were getting 10 and 20 comments per post, lots of back and forth with their readers, while seeing nothing but "No Comments" on my own shares.

Note: This is NOT a "Poor me!" post... Allow me to continue.

I rolled with these punches and transitioned from "creator" to "consumer". I stopped trying to garner attention for myself, and focused more on how entertaining or informative those around me were. Google+ was especially good for this. As I've mentioned before (and countless others have stated elsewhere), it was a place where interests came first and relationships were a by-product (as opposed to Facebook, which does it the other way around). For this reason, I didn't need to have existing relationships with others in order to enjoy the topics they were sharing. All I had to do was scroll, click, read, and repeat. Occasionally, I'd throw in a comment or two, but I never felt like I needed to, nor did I obsess over whether or not anyone read those comments. Sure, maybe I was missing the "social" aspect of social media, but I was content to participate this way for the better part of 5 years.

Then came the end of Google+ and, with it, my decision to resuscitate this blog.

I'm now tasking myself with taking up the mantle of "creator" once again, knowing full-well that it will be a harder slog than ever before. There are no longer a lot of other bloggers out there, attention spans are shorter than they have ever been, and there are so many more places for people to find entertainment these days. The chances that my words will even be read by another person are slim. The chances I'll get any sort of engagement is all but laughable.

Still, I'm going to do it... but not for the sake of social media. I'm going to do it for me. I'm going to do it because I love to get my thoughts out in an intelligent and creative way. I'm going to do it because I love to look back, sometimes years later, on what I've written to remember who I was or what I was going through. I'm going to do it because I love it. Period.

This means that I won't be holding myself to any other standard than my own satisfaction. I'm not going to try to pump out posts on a regular basis... they'll come when they come. I'm not going to get discouraged by the words "No Comments"... if they happen, they happen. If not, that's fine, too. Again, I see the irony in eliminating "social" from my social media experience, but my inner happiness is more important to me than conforming to whatever "rules" we're expected to live by in this digital age. If anyone reads my words and gets anything out of them... anything... that's merely a bonus now.

It's "me" time.

Friday's Foto: Awaiting the Weather

Boring Childhood Stories: Crushing Defeat

When I was 4 years old, my family lived on the 3rd floor of a 3-story walk-up apartment. Our family was still quite small back then... just my Mom and Dad, me, and my baby brother. Dad worked, Mom stayed home, and my brother... well... he was only a year old, so he didn't do much.

I, on the other hand, did lots. I played outside with my toy crane, using it's magnet to "discover" coins in the dirt. I let my imagination transform abandoned shopping carts into race cars, dump trucks, and rocket ships. Sometimes, I went to the corner store with my worldly-wise 6-year-old friends. And I stole drinks of water from the hose tap on the neighbor's house.

Sometimes, though, I'd have to play indoors. On those occasions, I'd really have to use my imagination to amuse myself. Sure, I had toys, but those got boring very fast. I needed more than what I could get from Fisher Price or Mattel. Besides, I had a little shadow that wanted to play, too, and the only game he was good at was "Will it Flush?" (not Mom's favorite). So, that's why I came up "Hands Out, Hands In" one fateful afternoon.

My brother and I were knelt side-by-side on my bed, facing the bedroom window. It was one of those old sash windows, the kind you lift to open and it stays open by magic (I'm guessing). Its wooden frame was coated with countless layers of kid-friendly lead-based paint, and there was no screen. It was only open enough for a small child to fit through, mind you, so nothing to worry about. Besides, Mom was always close by... usually in the kitchen, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking on the phone to one of her friends. You know, basic 1970's parenting.

The "how to's" of my new little game were fairly straightforward... I'd say, "Hands Out!", and we'd stick our hands out the window. Then, with a "Hands In!", we'd yank them back in again. What the objective of the game was, I couldn't tell you, aside from just having fun. At 4 years old, it isn't about winning or losing.

Or so I thought.

The first couple of "Hands Out!" and "Hands In!" saw 4 little hands thrust out into the open air and jerked back inside, accompanied by my brother's laughter. The third or fourth time, however, only 2 hands burst into the sunshine: Mine. I brought them back in, reminded my brother of the very complex rules of our game, and tried again.

"Hands Out!"

Nothing. He suddenly had zero interest putting his chubby little fingers anywhere near the window, regardless of my coaxing.

"There's nothing to be scared of," I chided him. "See?" And with that, I stuck my hands out one more time... only to have the magic give out and the window come crashing down.

There was no scream of pain.

Don't get me wrong... there was pain. Plenty of it. All 8 of my fingers were crushed awkwardly between the window and the sill, and I had no way to free them. But there was no scream. Had there been, I know my Mom would have come to see what sort of torture I was subjecting my brother to. She was always profiling like that (not necessarily without cause).

I finally managed to yell, "MOM!"

"Come here if you want to talk to me!" she yelled back from the kitchen.

"I CAN'T!!!"

Something in my voice must have registered, because that brought her running. She saw my plight, scrambled onto my bed, and tried to force the window back open. It wouldn't budge. No matter how hard she tried, that thing just wasn't going to let me go.

By now, there were definitely tears. Panic had joined the pain, and I thought I might be stuck like that forever. Or worse... maybe I was going to die! Not taken out with a razor blade in an apple, or kidnapped by a hobo, or any of the other likely ways for a kid to go in the 70's...

No. Death by window.

The next few minutes were unbearable, as my Mom had to go find help. I don't remember if it was the building superintendent or someone else, but after what seemed like hours, they were finally able to pry the window back open and release my battered hands. If I had thought I was in pain before, boy, was I in for a surprise!

The blood rushing back into my fingers felt like molten lava. The excruciating heat spread through each digit, every nerve screaming with the voices of a thousand tormented souls. I was bathed in pure, unrelenting agony.

Mercifully, a black hole exists in my memories between release from the window and the time that our family doctor arrived at the house. That's right... he came to our house. No long walk to his office. No waiting for Dad to come home and take me to a hospital. Just a call from Mom and there was a doctor on our doorstep.

It was a different time.

Somehow, I didn't break a single bone. There was a lot of swelling, though (soft tissue damage?), and the doctor's remedy for that was almost as bad as the injury itself. I'm told it only lasted an hour or so, and certainly not without a respite here and there, but it felt like eternity to me. In fact, it gave me the most vivid and enduring memory of the entire experience...

As I sat at the kitchen table, sobbing, with hands that were both burning and freezing thrust into a bag of ice cubes, I watched my Dad's flip-style digital clock count the minutes until this particular hell was over. Burned into my brain are those bright white, bisected digits on a field of black, held in place by a tiny metal tab... a tab that retracted at a glacial pace until, at long last, the much-anticipated "flip" revealed the next number. Again, and again, and again.

For those of you keeping track...

Final Score: Baby Brother: 1, Me: 0

It Was Fun While It Lasted...

I'm of an age now where I can look around and see how different the world is from when I was a kid. So many things that my young mind perceived as eternal have become abandoned relics. Some have passed from the collective memory entirely.

Every now and then, I catch a glimpse of the way things used to be. Sometimes I find an old photo, taken with a "real camera", or a treasured toy that has lived at the bottom of a box for decades. Occasionally, YouTube will show me Saturday morning commercials that someone uploaded from an old VHS recording. Always I feel a certain sense of sadness that I can't quite explain. Maybe it's a longing for simpler times. Perhaps it's because I'm reminded of how much time has passed and how fast it continues to pass. Or something else entirely that would require professional help to uncover...

Let's move on.

The other day, when I saw the dreaded Yellow Banner on Google+, decrying the End Times, I felt that sadness again. This time, however, I know why.

I'm really going to miss the only social network that felt like it "fit". Finally, a place had come along where I could find interesting people with interesting opinions on a wide variety of interesting topics. Unlike Facebook (my only previous social networking experience), Google+ offered relationships based on interests, not interests based on relationships. I was given the opportunity to expand my views, to learn things I didn't know I didn't know, and to do it all in a place where I felt equal to everyone around me.

Though "The Plus" changed in many ways over the course of its 7 years (some good, many not so good), it remained a place I returned to time and again. I can't say that I'm one of those people who founded strong friendships on the platform (I was always more of a lurker than a creator), but I did grow to respect a good many of its inhabitants, and I always looked forward to seeing what new things had piqued their interests. It's the thought of losing this, coupled with a desire to return to the exciting early years of G+ that brings me sadness.

Time does march on, though, and things change. We can get stuck pining for the past, or we can forge a new future. Many of us are returning to blogging and Twitter. It may seem like a step backwards, but I suspect we'll take what we learned from Google's social experiment and make these things into something fresh and new.

It's what I hope for, anyway.

Diagnosis, Please

There are those who would argue it is an understatement to say that I am an emotionally reserved guy. And there would be others who would say, "He has emotions?!?" In truth, yes, I seldom show much in the way of emotional range beyond annoyed, really annoyed, and (occasionally) mild indifference. Why is this? Who's to say? Perhaps it comes from a childhood devoid of hugs, maybe it's simply the result of a cynical mind probing the harsh realities of this thing we call life.

Or I'm a jerk. I guess we'll never know.

Anyway... Something is happening. Something so weird and foreign to me that I'm not even sure how to describe it. I seem to be developing some sort of "condition", I think. I have no idea what kind of condition, only that it comes with a very disturbing symptom. Get a load of this...

I came across a YouTube video today of a little girl playing the Star Wars theme music (rather brilliantly, I might add) on her synthesizer. I thought it was pretty cool, shared it on Google+, and then showed it to my daughter when I got home from work. After only a few bars, as I was trying to point out how technically challenging the piece was to a teenager who probably has no capacity for understanding this, I felt my vision begin to swim. I blinked a few times, then continued my pointless commentary, only to find that my voice was cracking. For a second, I couldn't figure out what was happening, but it quickly dawned on me that, Holy Crap, I might be starting to cry!

Seriously, Star Wars has a special place in that organ of mine that moves blood around my body, but come on! It's music, for crying out loud (pun not intended)...

Needless to say, I made an excuse about the video being to long to watch right now, hit the power switch on my phone, and hurriedly found something else to do in another part of the house. Close call!

Later, as I was watching TV with Lisa, I received a notification on my phone about something shared with me on Google+ about Parks Canada making their Park Passes free in 2017 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the National Parks system. Definitely not emotionally-charged material, as I'm sure we can all agree. Or so you'd think.

As I was trying to tell Lisa about it, since we love going to Banff as often as possible but don't really look forward to the $20 fee that only seems to be enforced on the honor system, I felt the tremble creeping back into my throat and the heat rising in my ocular cavities. Again! It was going to happen again, dammit! Only a quickly-feigned coughing attack (convenient in light of my recent chest cold) saved me from having to explain how I can be stone-hearted and immovable during a fight that renders my girlfriend to a sopping mass of sniffles and tears but get all blubbery myself when I find out how great this country we live in is. Just because we have many amazing things to be proud of as a nation, not the least of which is our generosity toward our fellow man...

Uh oh... I think... I think it might be happening again...

Am I dying?

So. Damn. Frustrating.

One thing. I only had one thing to do, and I couldn't. A simple blog post, that's all. A couple paragraphs, a few sentences... anything. Just to live up to the "write every day" promise I made to myself, only to see it blown on Day 2.

I woke up with a cold. And not just any old cold, folks... One of those deep-down-in-your-chest kinda colds that makes it feel like your lungs are filled with rancid honey, gurgling with every breath and rattling wetly with every cough. And cough I did. Lots. Before long, I could have sworn I had taken a sledgehammer to the chest but blacked out the event.

And let's not forget the aches (as if I could). Persistent and relentless, forcing me to constantly roll over to a more comfortable position, a position that I would never be allowed to find. The mattress was at once a back-bending valley and a mountainous range of sharpened peaks. No amount of squirming or contorting could make my body conform to its demonic landscape. My pillow was but a cinder block, whose sole-purpose was to slowly merge with my head, grinding through my skull and, finally, squeezing my brain into a white-hot diamond of pain.

And so, this was the way I spent my day, whether it be in the bed, on the couch, or pacing the floor... A constant struggle to simply endure and, hopefully, come out on the other side.

At one point, I pulled out the big guns and went with my tried and true method for beating a cold... a swelteringly hot bath. So hot that I had to raise the temperature while I was in the water, or I'd never be able bear it. With a Stephen King novel in hand and sweat pouring from my face, I let the heat do it's magic. Like the Gunslinger obliterating the town of Tull, I pictured the heat killing every last virus cowering deep inside my aching muscles.

It was then the words started to form in my head. A brilliant, witty, insightful collection of thoughts that I would craft into a magnificent blog post. Inspiration seemed to be practically flowing through every fibre of my being and my brain was afire with creativity. One more chapter of the book, two more long pulls on the bottle of Gatorade, and I was ready to leave the heat behind and commence putting brilliance to paper, as it were.

The hard reality is that these incredible snippets of prose were nothing more than fever-dream, carried swirling down the drain with the now-salty bathwater, leaving me emptied of both inspiration and the will to stay awake. And leaving you, dear reader, with this post; a day late and brilliance-free.