I’m winging it here…

We’re tuned in and turned up on such a high level these days and I’m not so sure it’s one we can maintain. If you’ve noticed the system has already started to collapse and we’re forced inwards to get real with what’s important. We’re all collectively going through a major shift and I hope it’s one that wakes us up and brings us back to our senses. For me, I remember a time there was nothing to do but wait. Nothing to pacify the time, unless I got active and got to it. Now everything is quick, coming in from all sides at a million miles an hour.

We’ve trained ourselves for the quick fix, not for an actual drug, but maybe one considered just as dangerous. This drug of choice we’ve allowed to consume us in ways we might never know. Think about it, your social media feed is all about scrolling, and liking, and sharing, to what end? To waste time? To connect with others, to learn something? Don’t fool yourselves into believing it doesn’t control you and don’t make those silly excuses as to why you waste hours on them. I’m not listening, I’ve tuned out.

I want the slow burn of life. Not this fast-paced mess of a world we live in now. Working to live and not gaining anything in return but to do it again the next and the next day. This isn’t a post to get you down, I’d rather you use it to lift you up and maybe even as a slap in the face to all that you’re missing outside.

I received terrible news about a loved one this week, I broke down, sobbed, and even surrendered to the unknown. Just as I was wallowing in the labels I’d given myself, I read an article about a teen who lost both parents to COVID within a few days’ time. WAKE UP! Here I am at 41 having really lived and spent time with mine when a young adult was losing hers at a critical time in her life. I was choosing to feel sad and helpless, even angry that I couldn’t travel and go home. After my mini-breakdown, crying session, I realized I could choose to get back up and do what I can from where I am with what I have.

I’ve made mistakes, I’ve been horrible at times, I’ve had life drag me by the ear to the mirror, holding the back of my neck fiercely and forcibly against my own reflection to see myself not as the person in the photos I post online, but as the human who is naked, alone, and scared. To see that person feels as close to seeing your soul as I think is possible. What you might not know about me is that no one on earth could ever judge me more than I judge myself. It’s ingrained in me. When I started modeling at 14 they told me everything wrong with me, how my nose tilted up and would create a shadow in photos, how my eyelids folded in, and wouldn’t be great to model makeup. then the biggest was my height keeping me from big runway shows. I got knocked down before I even had a chance to stand up. So you see, when I take photos of myself I know my angles, I know intimately where the faults are, and where shadows lie. My end photo might look great but it’s only because I’ve embraced everything that anyone ever told me was wrong with me and fooled myself into thinking that’s what everyone would want to see. Maybe they do, but I prefer to believe we as humans want more than a quick fix.

What’s real is nature, your home, your family, and friends. It can not be found online, on some app, or anywhere else that keeps you from spending your time wisely.

With this new realization of what social media does to you, I laugh and think of all the times I became persuaded by it, to be seduced by what the algorithm was feeding me. Already emotional, which strips the logic away, I noticed that we’ve become so used to the next best thing that we never give anyone thing a real chance. Apply it to whatever you want but it’s true. So now I see it’s not only me, we’re conditioning ourselves, actually… already have conditioned to mask up, be someone who we think others want us to be, and we’ve made it so easy.

Perfect example, dating apps. I’ve read some funny memes suggesting that you connect with a person, take a nap, and then wake up single as if that’s the longevity of the connection. There’s got to be some truth in that. Sure you get a bunch of “likes”, someone catches your eye, you say “hi”, it’s all going good until BAM, someone new pops up either for you or for them and it’s on to the next. Same with social media, always scrolling wanting another laugh, another quote, another image, and so on.

In the “olden days”, they had the slow burn perfected, gave you what you needed to savor the moment, no matter what you were doing, and nothing more. We were who we were without the smoke and mirrors, or filters and apps, as we’d refer to them now. We were not only connected more but on a more intimate level and how could it not be that way? The effort was put in to help your neighbor, thought and time went into courting a lover, there was a connectedness more tied to the earth and felt in the wind. We paid attention more to the seasons changing, took stock at the end of the year to count blessings no matter how small or insignificant.

So you can scroll through the memes and quotes all you want but you’ll never know the feelings behind them unless you put the phone away. For those of you using it as an outlet during these hard times all I ask is that you use it for good, spread kindness, connect with people, and really put the time into loving them.