It Was in the Bleak December

The word I learned (evidently not well) in Dr. Haake's class that I tried and failed to remember in order to use it for this blog post was "crots". I knew it would be a good pun to title the post "Blood Crots" but I could not remember the word in order to form the pun. Neither could a classmate. Now I will never forget it.

It means teeny little fragments of prose, like the ones in that post. Or this post, the one that follows this crot.

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From the story I was working on this week: "She sobs as if sobbing is screaming."

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I stopped spending approximately half of my free time on Facebook shortly after Thanksgiving. This time was equal parts socializing, reading interesting articles friends had linked, and pointless noodling. Now I look at Facebook ~once a day, not scrolling much, not clicking on much. I miss the socializing, badly, but here are the reasons I quit:

• Politicians' faces, when even the people posting don't like the politician promoted
• Vitriol 
• Sarcasm 
• Constant observation of war 
• Constant observation of violent death 
• Advertisement-laden new-agey bullshit standing in for sincere assistance
• Opinionatedness when, honestly, it does not matter, because you will not change anyone's mind, and you're going to change your own mind anyway when a new research study comes out next year 

And every time I check in, on those once-a-day-or-so occasions, I see all these things before I've even spent five minutes. I feel more uneasy about Facebook and what I hope to get out of it than I ever have. Surely I can't just take off from it until the election is over? Or until ISIS is wiped out? Or until school shootings stop? Because those are all hamster wheels that do not stop turning when their inducements end. There is always more to chase.

I want to promote my writing and my thoughts on social media, but my observation of the pattern of the Internet is that all of its spaces eventually become weird and feculent flea markets rather than orderly, janitored malls. Facebook is full of what I perceive to be junk, and cutting through it is so taxing.

This is a more judgmental statement than I generally like to make on this blog. But Facebook is making me tired, when once it used to make me happy. I don't know what has changed, and I wonder if it's me, if I'm just...like...getting too old for this shit.

Oh, and the result? I feel calmer, more open, less stuffed. (Stuffed like a taxidermied animal, like an overfull diner, like the British slang.) I don't want to stop quitting Facebook. I miss it, but I miss this calm, satisfied, reflective self more. And I think I need her more than I need Facebook.

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It's been three weeks now since I made a Yes video. For that I am sorry. What's holding me up has been: noticeable background noise outside my apartment (hammering, leafblowers), lighting problems, a lack of interest in putting on makeup on my days off, and too little mental space to think positively enough to speak positively into my webcam. All but one of these are insignificant problems, but they've held me up anyway, probably because of the last one on the list.

I know exactly what I'm going to say in my next video, but I didn't make it this week, either. Soon.

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Latest art project: redecorating my right hand.

I mentioned the wing ring previously, but the other one is this odd hunk of iolite which appears to be a different color and clarity of purple every time I look at it. It's a fascinating gem. The story of me acquiring it might actually be a good one, but it's not crot-length.

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I looked over my New Year's resolutions from last year. Virtually none of them were successes. This is not a mark of me sucking, but a mark of how different this year has been from the norm. After the summer I lowered my expectations significantly and turned my attention inward, which has been valuable but not as outwardly productive as meeting my resolutions would have been. I suspect 2016's resolutions will reflect the lowered bar, but I haven't really thought much about them yet.

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As a follow-up to the last post, I BEEN READIN. READING IS SUPER AWESOME. SO IS THE LIBRARY. GO CHECK OUT A BOOK AND READ IT RIGHT NOW.