Blog #11

I feel really lucky during this time to have technology that connects me to friends around the world and the country. Time zones make reaching them complicated and I feel that I resent the boundaries I have to set in order to ensure I do homework. Even though I feel so lucky to be able to communicate with them, it has to be spread out during the day according to where they live and when their days start. It feels like such a relief seeing their face and hearing about their days, but I end a call feeling transported back to a reality of isolation. It feels as though all I need to do to patch the hurt I feel is to pick up the phone, but that’s not really a solution to my loneliness and is certainly not conducive to productive studying. I have tried connecting with people and keeping them on the phone while we study together, but logistically that hasn’t been a practical solution thus far. Additionally, I think that in the midst of uncertainty, I feel the need to prioritize academics over other needs of mine. I think that is not a completely fair, and this is mostly just a confusing time, and academics are potentially a great way to remain grounded during this time, but I also see this time as being a great opportunity to be bored and immerse myself in the present. I go back and forth between loving my technology and hating it. I think it I feel that my life is online instead of in my body. My classes, friends, music and so much is online, that I feel like those things are demanding my attention more than the tangible things in front of me. Even my eyes are bugging. I get off my screens and despite having better than 20/20 vision, I struggle to seeing clear outlines of books on the shelves on the wall across the room. There is an element of disconnection that comes with investing so much of yourself in a screen. We are complex and advanced organisms that understand the tangible nature of things that exist in a technological medium because they do in fact impact the reality of our life. However, it feels unnatural, unsustainable and does just enough to make me happy in a moment, but leaves me feeling empty. I want to stop feeling like I am fighting my biology and sacrificing my wellbeing to exist on a screen. Maybe that is dramatic and I need help reframing the predicament I am in, but that is really how I feel. It feels that going online to talk to friends or take a test or write a paper is equatable to a bandaid. It feels like an addiction. I get on these incredible highs that I feel will last forever, like i can do anything I put my mind to! …and then I crash. Its essentially like a 7 year old with intense ADHD on a sugar high in the grocery store. They bounce around uncontrollably pulling everything off of the shelves excitedly exclaiming to their parent how the amazing the 7-course meal they will cook (without any help ;) ) will blow their mind. A 7 year old chef prodigy is this child. Get ready. But then, then they start dragging their feet and throwing a fit in the grocery store because they are strung out and exhausted. I have to find a way to override the unconscious emotions tied to certain activities and find a way to distribute my energy and a positive narrative over everything such that I feel it has meaning and I’m not shouting into a void. I just have to find a way to shake the alarms in my head that are telling me to run and go on a different course… because that part of me just wishes I could completely disconnect from my phone and my computer, and learn from the books on my shelves and embracing my surroundings as they are. There is a limitless number of things that I could immerse myself in: my family, my pets, the objects in my house I haven’t give a second look for the past decade. Those things would inspire me and captivate me, yet as I feel tied to my technology, I feel unable to access that part of myself that lives in the here and now. Maybe that is what I find most difficult. Not living in the moment. I want to return to my mind and feel good about just being in it. Part of me feels that this is such an opportunity for us to stop and take a minute to reevaluate our lives. Learn how to be bored, something that constant academic pursuits and resume building has to a degree robbed our childhoods of. My mother and I went to the same high school, Weston High School, but we always joke about how great it would have been if I could have gone to her high school.

I could go on forever about this. But I think this is a sufficient blog and I have to get onto other assignment. Grind never stops :)