It is the end of what has been a long and stressful week, but I think today was actually reasonably productive, so hopefully next week I will feel a bit better about things. I still want to take a bit of time off sometime soon, but I'm feeling somewhat less in the "I need to get out right now" panic that I feel like I was in the other evening.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the world is still burning around me, but at least in my own little haven of calm here, things are pretty peaceful. Andie is painting the stairs, the cats are sitting either side of me napping, I have no other commitments besides this blog this evening, and I don't have to get up tomorrow if I don't want to. Not a lot to complain about there, really.
It's important to take a step back from the chaos of life in the 21st century every now and again and consider How Things Really Are. A good means of visualising this is imagining what life would be like if you unplugged the Internet and had no means of being contacted besides someone calling you on your phone or stopping by your house. If you can look at your life from that perspective and see that things are, for the most part, Okay, then you should probably do your best to keep seeing things from that angle when you plug the Ethernet cable back in.
Because ultimately, as shit as some of the stuff going on in the world can be, there's little you can probably do about it, particularly if you're far away from the Bad Things. Take the situation in America, for example; I am concerned for the safety and wellbeing of the people I know over there, of course, but practically speaking, there's absolutely nothing I can do to affect that whole situation. Things are different for those in the middle of that whole shitshow, of course — and I'm gratified to see that at least some folks are waking up to the fact that posting disapproving messages on a social network is not the same as getting out there and Doing Activism — but from where I'm sitting, all I can really do is be a supportive ear if people need it and not be a jerk to those who are Dealing With Shit.
It's difficult to keep your mind trained to think in this way, particularly when the buzz of Online is always there, encouraging you to check in on things and "just see how bad things have gotten". You can tell yourself all you want that you're doing it because you find it darkly humorous rather than utterly terrifying, but deep down, you, of course, know that all you're doing is deliberately and wilfully making your own mood darker for no real discernible benefit to your life as a whole.
That may sound callous. That may sound uncaring. But at some point you have to disconnect. At some point you have to focus on yourself and the people directly around you. At some point you have to remember that as enriching and fulfilling and exciting as an online life can be, it will always have to play second fiddle to your Real Life. Your Real Life is in the here and now, surrounding you, defining you. Your online life can be made to go away by just pulling out that Ethernet cable. And, as long as you haven't stumbled into any situations where your online life has seeped into your Real Life — which is an increasing risk these days, I will concede — you can just go about your day.
That's what I'm going to attempt to keep telling myself, anyway. The alternative just feels like perpetual misery.
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