Exclamation Points

- I can’t escape it. 

- I recognize I have weak self-control and an obsessive nature.   

- I am bothered more than I am benefited by it.   

- Senseless comments, posts about guns or food or politics or religion, hoards of vain self-portraits and pictures with god-knows-what on baby faces are increasingly intolerable.  

- Lack of originality, and by that I mean waaaay too many reposts of quotes.

- I use it as a solution to the slightest frustration, boredom, or loneliness.  

- I strongly believe there are better, healthier, and more wholesome ways of maintaining friendships.  

- I hate feeling helpless when a friend or family member cries aloud, or worse, guilty that I didn’t react or involve myself for various reasons, which then always evolves into a fiery internal battle of conscious.   

- Too many people to care about.     

- I am regularly embarrassed for and by my friends and family.   

- I regularly embarrass myself.   

- I forget who can see my posts and have to sensor myself when I remember. 

- I have been responsible for contributing to viral misinformation.   

- It distracts me from my immediate surroundings and company.   

- Its irresistibly convenient mobile access risks my life and other lives.   

- There is always something new to see, whether it’s worth my time or not, and thus feeds an addiction which makes me feel ill with defeat and deceit.   

- Too many opportunities exist for irrational comparison.   

- I can’t get myself to erase people who don’t deserve my friendship and then grow painstakingly resentful towards them and myself.   

- Too many temptations for commitments my hospitable, selfless, thoughtful, push-over nature can’t refuse and my schedule can’t accept.   

- Easy access for needy people.   

- The extremely high probability for textual misinterpretation.   

- The emotional dependency I’ve developed for it.   

- People increasingly dismiss my invites-my genuine requests for company- and instead are taking my ideas and running with them without me. 

- The common attitude that Facebook invites are impersonal.   

- The regularly negative and offensive people that litter the feeds.   

- Lazy social networkers, owning a profile simply to browse other people’s lives instead of interacting with them.   

- The overload of insincere and effortless birthday wishes.   

- The annoying and constant expectation that I’ll take and post event pictures.   

- “Picture Diarrhea”.   

- Sometimes people just aren’t meant to linger in my life or me in theirs-just passing extras in momentarily overlapping worlds.   

- I have a relentless, agonizing need, enabled by Facebook, to compensate for the social disaster that was my teenagehood.   

- Too often I compulsively instigate.   

- It’s a cyberland of rampant narcissism and wasted time!

When my 7.5 hour work day is done I then immediately jump into my weekday hobbies. The problem with most of those - digital illustration, digital photography, portfolio and photo blog maintenance, Instagram-ing, Twitter-ing, Tumblr-ing, planning weekend outings, watching movies/series, and researching the world until the wee morning hours - is that they also involve looking at a computer screen. My eyes, ass, wrist, back, and brain often turn to a throbbing mush after 12 hours…and to think what’s happening to them after 5 days in a row is rather disconcerting!

My 100 year old grandma is nearly blind, somewhere in the 90 percentile. She’s increasingly suicidal over it, worst of all. The only way she knows I’m present is if I make an announcement along with a gentle tapping to her thigh or shoulder. She can’t feed herself, dress herself, or navigate around the house. She is utterly miserable and I, as well as everyone around her, feel miserably helpless. 

This weighs heavy on my heart, of course, and I can’t help to think what worse state I may be in at her age…or younger, probably, considering I spend 70+ hours weekly staring into screens of sorts. I’ve had regular computer exposure since as far back as the early 80’s. Not only was I raised with tech savvy parents always ahead of their peers, I was also born into the generation of microprocessors. In her whole century of life, my grandma has voluntarily sat in front of or held one of these for no more than a few hours total! Costco optometry department, the neighborhood chiropractic, and my fitness trainer will tell you I’m on the highway to her hell a third of her lifespan too soon.

The upcoming generation of artificial intelligence better hurry along so to compensate for all that sitting and staring I’ve done in my 30 years and that I’ll surely do in my 30 years to come.  Maybe I should reconsider continuation of a digital arts career. Or I could make an absurdly drastic change to my choice of hobbies now, but I’m certain it will be a very lonely, backwards road outside of computer-land. Though it doesn’t feel like it yet, maybe our bodies are already evolving to tolerate such strained hours in it. I hope, anyway.

My grandma’s deterioration has etched fear into my future but has brought about a startling fresh perspective for the present state of my well-being. Soon, if not tomorrow, something has got to give.