Writer’s Block vs. Technology
I’ve been struggling a bit lately with coming up with things to blog about. On a whim, I asked a good friend to throw out random words/ideas so that I could have something to focus on. That turned out to be quite a process. This genuinely intelligent being insisted that he couldn’t come up with anything (note: i mention his intelligence because there are some people i know that i would genuinely believe didn’t have a single thing on their minds, but i know that that is not the case in this instance). Now I think that where i went wrong is by telling him what i needed it for… it’s funny how when we put boundaries and limits on ourselves our minds shut down.
If i asked a little kid outside playing to say some random words I’m sure I’d get my fill, easy… but as we get older we learn to look at things more critically. We’re told there’s a time and a place for certain behaviors. We’re told we need to conform… and that’s what my friend did… he sat there with a number of thoughts going thru his mind, but he wanted to conform his response to what he thought would be an “acceptable” topic to blog about.
I recognize this practice as a necessary evil, but it also saddens me a bit. While i don’t think that we need to shout out every single thought that passes thru our minds, i think it would be nice to feel free to just spout out nonsense for the sake of itself sometimes.
After a LOT of coaxing, i got him to look around and tell me five things that surrounded him: cd case, stapler, phone, palm pre, speaker… poor stapler. He seems out of place, right? I feel like all the other items are so technology driven… while the stapler.. i dunno… it just seems functional but not flashy.
Sure his stapler could be decked out in Swarovski crystals, but even still… it would still just be that clunky office supply that everyone has on their desk… completely functional, but not much else. When i tried to lump the other stuff together i came up with “technology”… i mean, i suppose they fit there, but really i feel like they can also all be used to disseminate information. Then of course my mind started wandering to how much info we send/receive everyday. How much of it is junk we can do without and how much we really *need*.
I’ve been told that i’d probably be a happier person if i could unplug… and there’s probably a lot of truth to that. I am a slave to my phone. If it beeps, vibrates, alerts, whatever, I need to know what it is immediately… usually it’s a sale at Old Navy or a bill is due… shit i don’t really need to know while i’m enjoying time with friends… but it’s hard for me to just turn it off. That makes me sad too. I remember talking on the phone for hours in high school.. now i struggle to make small talk.. but sit me at a keyboard and i’ll ramble on for hours. I’m not really sure when that switch happened for me. It helps for keeping in touch with folks who live all across the country, but really, what i would love to get back to is some good old-fashioned one-on-one undistracted convos.
I think imma go post this on facebook, twitter, myspace, friendster, gchat, aim, 200 messageboards, and blackplanet and see what people think…
Gangsta Mittens 
Leave a Reply