I can’t sleep. I’m lying here and wondering what I’m doing with my life yet spend thirty minutes staring at my phone. How much time of staring at my phone has now accumulated? How much time do we all stare at our phone, blankly scrolling? We’re so bland it’s almost as if the phone is scrolling us; moving our finger like a crank on a boring toy. We're just gazing into a tiny box and hoping for something but not sure what. Really? What is it we’re looking for? The end? Do we all just want it to end. The sun will swallow the earth and we’ll be like, “Thank god..I was wondering how long I was going to have to sit here and stare at this thing.”
So I alternately waste time on the phone and get angry at myself for wasting time on the phone. Luckily, most of my “WTF am I doing?” self interrogations come while I’m actually doing something. I’m working, I’m parenting, I’m a contributing member of society, but during all that I’m wondering what gig I should take or what move I should make. I sit down and scroll. Scrolling on your phone has to be the new heroin. It’s the new cigarette when you’re anxious. It’s the chocolate bar you don’t need while you quietly admonish yourself for eating a chocolate bar you don’t need. Like there’s one you need. I chuckle and think about how to put that into a tweet.
How our phones see the most advanced species on Earth.
What I meant to get to in that last paragraph is that moments are not being fully seized. Carpe Day-um. Like Damn, but the wide-eyed shocked version aghast at just how much time and energy is devoted to running your brain on the same damned treadmill of thoughts. And I should add that 40 is real. Over the hill. Cliche cliche cliche oh goddamn I’ve become a cliche. I’ve been mid-life crisising since I was 20, but I’ve really stepped up my game. And it all comes down to not getting the things done that I need to get done. And when you think about it, we’re just bags of guts propelled through space so there’s no need to get frantic about shit. BUT I DO. Which adds another layer of disappointment.
It’s not all bad. As a matter of fact that’s part of a first-world white guy’s problems. It’s so good that you have to make more of it. You should be doing more with your fortune; your climate-controlled, food-everywhere fortune. it’s the time in our history to turn our collective conscious into an altruistic force for good. JESUS IS HE COMPLAINING ABOUT HAVING IT TOO GOOD?
So, screw the phone and the scrolling and all these naked ladies on the Internet. Reach across the expanse and touch your loved one and be solid about every waking moment, walking movement. Be in control. Dipshits get addicted to dumb things, and as far as habits go, gently stroking a telephonic rectangle is really lame. God, get alcoholic and get into a fight. Turn the bland, chalk taste into something bloody real, but for the sake of all the humanity in a million year history, don’t go down quietly, blankly staring into the LCD liquid of a billion stupid stares. Swallowed souls. Get up and do the shit you want/NEED to do. Because it’s the phone that’s supposed to be the tool IT’S THE PHONE THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE TOOL.
And I could go to sleep now, but it’s time to get up and do something. I’ll let you know how that goes.