Click away (day 194)

Sometimes one more click doesn't cut it.  Sometimes the unreal nature of digital communications gets louder than the real connections they are supposed to represent.  Emails come in.  Some get answered.  Others sit in uncomfortable silence unable to generate a coherent response or be discarded.  As the life stream goes by they scroll off the screen and the silence becomes the response.  Sometimes they come back and do not take nothing for an answer.  Emails go out.  Some are answers and wish to be final.  Some are missives and wish to be answered but are forgotten until the response comes.  Some are FYIs and are confused when they elicit a response.  Whole days go by where the conversations with people in the flesh are greatly outnumbered by those with people never seen.  Eventually, the immediacy of digital communication gets confused for the efficiency of information surfing.  A manic clicking fest has left a mass of waiting and frustration.  Many conversations are in the air.  Typing them will always be slower and that's why there needs to be many in the air.  It's not more productive, it's the same.  Except for one crucial difference:  sometimes all the answers come at once and trigger a slight panic at seeing the day's end without an empty daybox.  It's the feed for the involuntary scroll out.  The drama of the inbox never ceases.  It's a soap opera with the same characters and different actors.  Apparently younger people don't do email.  The drama has no doubt mutated to infect another medium.

I needed time away from the the clicks.  I'm back now.  I think.

A song for this post.

A collective cozy (day 106)

I feel Christmas less than I used to.  Every year it feels a little more arbitrary than the year before.  I watch the lights go up and hear the peripheral chatter about gift buying.  The cards trickle in.  The party invites beep into my inbox.   Most of it feels like someone else's concern.   Despite feeling it less, I do love this time of year.  Especially right after school ends when there is a quiet anticipation of the silence in the city on Christmas day.   For a few days there is a collective relaxing that I really appreciate.  When it's ok not to check email because we've collectively agreed that business can wait.  It's a magical time but it has nothing to do with the usual descriptors of christmas.  It's a magical time because culturally we're taking time to look around.

January 1st marks the end of the magic but the start of a slightly different direction -- sometimes subtle but always hopeful.  It's hard for me to imagine that feeling of renewal right now.  Like many people who are tied to an academic schedule, this time just before the Christmas break is frantic and a bit hazy from the accumulated exhaustion.  It's like seeing the finish line accentuates the tired but also triggers a kind of third wind.  I am curious how it will feel on January 1st.

I'm looking forward to taking some time to work on my projects and read some books.  I might even do nothing for a couple of days.  Let it snow...

A song for this post.