Tag Archives: screen time

Lots of Rabbits, Lots of Holes

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As another year arrives on our doorstep, it’s time to predict the size and shape of the upcoming ride. Many like to entertain the possibilities of fresh starts, clean slates, or open roads. Others mark falling calendar pages as nothing more than the routine business of spinning clock hands. I sit somewhere outside both of those conceptualizations.

When daily existence is locked on a curve, turning endlessly around a fixed circle, it’s impossible to see what’s ahead. The looping, habitual mundanity of making only left turns doesn’t offer the freedom to target the horizon or look beyond the here and now. One foot in front of the other. Spin. Spin. Spin. Repeat.

But I am supremely grateful that the alignment of contemporary society and its increasingly isolated construction followed the trajectory of my unbalanced concoction of brain chemicals. The opposite would have been a living nightmare, and I can’t imagine what those who deeply crave human interaction and attachment are feeling right now.

When I was the happy-go-lucky party guy—ready for adventures and experiences, thrilled to be part of a bonded collective, and watched the world through optimistic eyes—the only way to achieve connection was through proximity and physical touch. Screens didn’t steal eye contact. Plans weren’t canceled or postponed with a last-minute text. We all seemed to stand on similar pages. Now we’re simply hidden away in covert caves, writing separate stories.

So, is this merely a chicken or egg scenario? Does the perpetual retreat of mankind into solitary silos cause our chemicals to shift at a biological level, or do we just adapt to whatever technological environment is presented to us? It’s a question that may not get answered until a few more generations have run the gauntlet.

But one thing is certain: If I still had the neurobiological makeup and sociable motor of my “former self” and was forced to navigate this modern minefield of dwindling attention spans, evasive maneuvering, and social media manipulation, I would have lost my mind even earlier.

Good luck to us all as we continue to jump, dodge, bob, and weave.

We’re going to need it.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Nerds Are Driving the Bus

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In recent years, a troubling trend has been developing that feels worthy of exploration. With the exponential rise in the rate of computer development, we are given the opportunity for some groundbreaking advancements in medicine, science, communication, learning, etc. But those presents often come with a caveat and the tradeoff may not be worth the sticker price.

The leading “tech gurus” seem to share a similar, disconcerting vision of our future, and it requires bending the planet to the whims of the insulated and isolated. Society is being influenced by and molded to the preferences and impulses of introverts unable to express themselves or make human connections in the real world. So the creation of alternate, virtual realities to hide those inadequacies behind cartoonish avatars or absolute anonymity feels like a warm safety blanket of protection. They can cower beneath a cloak of invisibility, never forced to reveal their authentic selves.  

Innovation directed toward helping hermits spend more and more time detached from reality to compensate for a total lack of social skills should not be the ultimate goal for humanity. If anything, we should be looking for ways to walk away from our desks, engage with our environment, and embrace the living, breathing ecosystem…while the air still passes as tolerable.

As someone who regularly stares at a screen, processing hundreds of pages of text every day, I see technology’s value as a powerful learning tool. But I also recognize the perilous nature of its quicksand construction. Our mental health and physical well-being are suffering under the crippling weight of split-second attention spans and an incessant pull to constantly redirect focus.

We’re spinning in place and dizzy from the effort.

Finding a balance between the body and the machine before the electronic puppeteer pulls the last remaining strings should be the primary objective.

Adolescence Interrupted

Goodnight, L.A.

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“‘Cause I could break like a bird.
Or I could swallow the sea.
It seems like the daylight is coming,
and no one is watching but me.”    —Counting Crows

With a weighty heart, I’m walking away from the city I’ve called home for the last 15 years. The only other time I was ushered toward the exit was at the completion of my college internship with the Beastie Boys in ‘99. I knew I still had so much left to accomplish, so much to explore. But I was dragged back east by the cuffs of my jeans, fingernails scraping the sidewalk. The most electrifying and enlightening period of growth I’d had in my young life was stamped with a finite expiration, and it was time to turn in the keys and retreat to the familiar. But I vowed I’d return to plant my flag.

I fell in love with this town from the minute my toes touched the smog-laden sidewalks. The energy. The hope. The constant buzz of brains consumed by a solitary pursuit. The land of dreams and dreamers, populated by an army of idealists and artists, is precisely where I found the welcoming, open arms I’d been waiting to fall into. It’s been almost 20 years since I was first smitten with a seductress disguised as Southern California, and it all zipped by in a hazy blink.

People talk about the nice weather and the constant traffic, but it’s so much more than that. The pound of the pavement and the cycles of the Pacific are inspiring, fueling, energizing, and driving us to be more fully engaged versions of ourselves. It’s less about the artificial sheen of glitz and glamour and more about the grounded grind. “Making it” doesn’t make us better, and most of the memories we’ll carry are collected during the pursuit.

This time, I’m leaving with a lot more knowledge about how the pistons move inside the grand Hollywood machine, but I remain just as enamored with the progressive perspective and overwhelming sense of hope that lives in this coastal town. I’ve seen the man behind the curtain, and I still believe he’s a wizard.

Over the last 14 months, I took a deep dive into this battered psyche on an exploration to find a meaningful justification and a greater sense of purpose for the next chapter. I slid a series of scenarios in and out of vacant brain spaces like a manic game of Tetris, and the only feasible fix for the constant trepidation about the impending tidal wave cresting above my head was a severe shift in my course trajectory.

Taking time to take stock of the reality that dwindling days disappear at a greater rate with every passing year is an important practice. Routines and rituals serve to speed our clocks, and if we don’t come up for air to check in with ourselves, we’ll drown in the monotony.

So, I watched another year slide off the calendar, spent some minutes trying to remember more than five truly significant moments from the last decade, and then made the decision to not allow ten more rotations around the sun to vanish by simply ignoring their pace.

We have very limited screen time on this show. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see how the shoes fit when we’re 80 or 90. Only a select few will push much beyond that.  Some of us get half as many chances to wipe the slate clean and start again.

Splitting the people I care about most into two groups on opposite sides of the country has never been a comfortable arrangement to accept. But I refuse to live with the regret of inaction. If I don’t spin the wheel to move the rudder, the scenery never changes. I’ll wake up an old man, wishing I’d better preserved the bonds that built me, and I’ll think of all the sunsets I took for granted, arrogantly expecting the following day to dawn.

I’m so grateful to have spent the majority of my prime years in this uniquely special city. To have been surrounded by an ironclad support circle as I navigated the wildly unpredictable waves that routinely accompany a creative life was the sole reason I was able to swim for so long.

But it’s time to switch tracks and replace stations. Let’s see where some of the other trains travel.

Adolescence Interrupted