I feel like i’m always picking apart the effect that social media has on everything because someone my age is probably part of the last generation to live before it, and I've watched it grow from Myspace to all encompassing fact of life for almost everyone I know. I wonder if it does more harm than good as far as my personal outlook on life and on society at large. I sure do follow a lot of “late stage capitalism” type content which does discourage me and make me think the world is without compassion after the 2016 election, I tried to feed as many positive and comforting things in that I can. a lot of dogs and cats, but there is a new kind of thing I've really been digging for maybe the past year or so: mental health awareness and the whole concept of neurodiversity which can be summed up as: Brains are Diverse: Everyone’s brain develops differently, leading to a variety of strengths and weaknesses. There’s no single “correct” way for a brain to work.
that sounds a lot more pleasing than “you have some kind of defect and you’re lazy”
I’m learning more about my brain from memes on Instagram about ADHD, bi-polar disorder, and anxiety than anyone told me when I started getting diagnosed with the a lot of this shit in middle school. back then I was in accelerated/gifted and talented classes, but also special education with an individualized education plan, it was confusing.I love that a lot of us are finally getting a better grip on who we are, even though i’m pushing 40. there are so many things in this world that I wish I had back when I was in school, and a better knowledge of how I operate is up at the top of the list of those things… . the dialogue in the memes and info-graphics about neurodivergence is definitely helping me work within my personal boundaries and take advantage of my strengths. there was a time when I wouldn’t be able to recognize that I even had any strengths and I would refuse to give myself any grace when it came to the limitations that I have little to no control over. I still slide backwards , but I tend to be able to catch myself doing it before it goes too far into the dark pit of self loathing like it used to. the awareness i’ve gained from these Instagram accounts about things like ADHD have done a lot to change my narrative about myself. I know longer accept the narrative that I’m lazy. or the whole “he’s not living up to his potential”. I’m sure I’ve written it on this blog, but the whole potential thing felt like my curse. I’ve been having these little breakthroughs through the process of writing whatever comes to mind, and I just want to say that maybe I haven’t lived up to my potential…yet. but I want to pose a question: who the fuck decides what my potential is? maybe things are coming together when i’m old enough to understand them better.
do I wish I did my school work in high school instead of class clowning and chasing girls, usually while on drugs? yes. but I had an at least 3.5 gpa at UMASS Boston before both alcoholism and depression checked me out of there. I literally stopped being able to read, I remember what the book was about: Assata Shakur. I could definitely cut myself a break, it’s not like I chose to have alcoholism and depression…trust me, no one would choose that. I could beat myself up about a lot of the things that I thought were poor choices that maybe I had little no no control over…not that I didn’t make poor choices along the way, I sure did.
I remember 4 years ago when I would wake up for the mind numbing job of cashier at shop rite supermarket in Neptune, NJ, just as COVID 19 was becoming a bigger and bigger deal. I said thinks like “i wish I had made better life choices”, like the past was even worth beating myself up over, or was in someway able to be changed, it’s done. just because I say this, doesn't mean I think about it all the time, I just happened to have been listening to Alan Watts talk about something similar.
trust me, before I fall asleep almost every night I still play replays of all of the cringe worthy embarrassing things I've done since I was ten, i’m not zen now or something.
if I hadn't been at shop rite in 2020 , I wouldn't have run off due to the anxiety caused by the hoards of people buying as much toilet paper as they could, which led to me ending up homeless, and coming to NYC against literally everyone's advice. i’m not going to tell each and every step, the ordeal was the inspiration for hand writing that little story in the park for the Strangers Project about the lawlessness on the street during pre-vaccination COVID, in the American epicenter of it is the reason that I started writing and I am still writing today, 3 years later. not that there is alternate pasts as far as I know (i’m not a theoretical physicist), but if things didn’t happen precisely the way they did, I might not have discovered what I confidently feel like is the reason i’m still here (alive, despite seriously close calls), to write. that isn’t hyperbole, either. gods honest truth, I think writing is my calling. i have always been careful not to take myself too seriously or be too dramatic. it was good when I started it in summer 2021, it came without too much forcing, but it got better…and I have no way of knowing if I got better at it, but I know it feels a thousand times better. logically it’ll keep going in that direction the more I practice, plus without my life experiences i’d have nothing interesting to write, anyway.
i’ll say this: i’m not oblivious to how online I am ( perhaps too much so, maybe even pathologically). I have friends that clown on me for it, and I’ll endure their jokes. That’s fine . I guess I envy them for having such enriching analog lives outside of the net, but i’m also pretty fond of the things my pocket computer provides for me. if I zoom out of the picture to a wide view, I would say the obscene amount of screen time (which is up this week thanks to Gemini) gives me more comfort than sickness. i’m not going to tell you that I can’t slip into deep disappointment with humans as a species, like as deep as later George Carlin bits, but it also connects me to people that make me have hope in the whole scene (earth) , plus all of the amazing dogs. When I’m having a particularly depressing day, I just scroll through all of the dog reels that the algorithm feeds me it really helps. I just got the notion that I could try to train it to not make me miserable all of the time like I was during the trump vs. Hillary campaign.
there are moments though, when it feels like there is reason to believe we fucked civilization beyond repair, or that we are in the dystopian timeline, just look at what is happening in gaza. it’s like when I watch whatever the local NYC news station is (I can’t remember) , it makes the city look like a lawless mad max film and I wonder if that’s what the city is or if it’s the lens i’m looking through. is it just better for ratings to scare the shit out of the viewer? Rupert Murdoch made a media empire out of Fox News by playing to the viewers fears and exploiting them, and to me it’s one of the most damaging things anyone has done to the media landscape in at least my lifetime. I wonder if the social media algorithms are designed to invoke fear, just as television news has been for the last few decades. i’m doing a new thing where I ask my AI assistant questions that it can easily research, by the way, and the violent crime rate in NYC has remained relatively flat over the last decade. so when it comes to the local news, they are pushing it for what I assume are ratings, because there isn’t a significant increase or decrease. that’s what people need, I think, to know when they are being fed a line, or manipulated.
I trust a lot of this Neurodiversity type content, because it’s so relatable, and it presents me with things I always knew about myself but could never describe. for all of the bad shit Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) is responsible for (that’s a whole separate post) at least i learn a few things from the content on there that raises awareness about mental health. honestly if i’m doing anything at all right in my writing I hope it’s the same thing (raising awareness) , I want to speak for people that have mental illness and speak to people that might not understand it.
heyyyyy, of course you can support my content by making a small donation, I actually need all of the coffee today, I didn’t sleep well last night and i’m trying not to take a nap: ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
