I continue to remind myself that, as a creative, refraining from posting positive things into social spaces not only is a kind of self-censorship but it leaves gaps that are quickly filled by negative things.
I was more active online in the weeks leading up to the unity referendum that happened here in Alberta, Canada in October. It was not necessarily about joining into the fray and shouting partisan slogans or reposting dubious information. I did my share to “get out the vote” and sent numerous reminders to friends and offers of free babysitting (which no one took me up on) but mostly I just posted non-political stuff.
I kept sending links to my running website.
I took dozens of autumn photos and shared them everywhere.
I fired up the frequency of my back posting from this and the other writing project I’m doing about algorithms and technology topics.
I shared positive thoughts and whimsical aphorisms about all sorts of things that popped into my head.
And I just tried to fill the space: not necessarily to interfere with the conversation, but because that’s my role. My job, unpaid and often thankless, is to clutter up your social media feed with the mundane. It is to drop art into your apps, pack your photo scrolling with pics from nature, and remind you that real life is bigger than political bullshit, that it continues even when the mouths of politicians stop aren’t flapping and hucksters of every stripe aren’t trying to needle a bit more power.
Rare moments, but they exist. They need to exist. They need to continue to exist.
Despite the evidence to contrary, life is bigger than all that.
Art. Thought. Story. Music. Colour. Trails. Sunsets. All of it must keep going no matter what. When they stop, when we stop being creative positive, then the negative wins and what is there left worth fighting for.
Terms FROm this POSt
- algorithm
- The modern internet in all its forms is far too large for people to fully manage anymore without the help of automated systems. Any time an unseen calculation weighing our public profiles against what an app, website, or service chooses to show us, one of these automated systems is at work behind the scenes recommending product, ideas, politics, and friends. The invisible hand of fate has turned into a digital calculation so big we can’t understand it, and so complex it is often hauntingly accurate. If you are not afraid of the algorithm and what it has done to our society, you are probably not paying enough attention.
- Canada
- I write these words (mostly) from a small city on the Canadian prairies. It is written with an international audience in mind, but I don’t convert my units, hold my jargon or drop my elbows for readers beyond our borders, eh?
- job
- This is a fuzzy word for me as I write here. I am technically self-employed, the overseer of a little one-man Canadian consultancy corporation. Hustling for contracts is hard work tho, so I occasional look for more steady employment gigs that interest me, and allude to it in my writing.
- running
- This is not a running blog, but I took up distance running in 2008 and worked my way up to running marathons, including two of the World Majors: New York and Chicago. These days I just run for fun and the social aspect, but it has shaped and shaded so much of the last two decades of my life that there is bound to be a mention on this site more than I would let on.
- social media
- You almost certainly found this post because it was posted on someone’s feed. The platforms are terrible, but as it stands they are about the only way to find an audience in this crazy version of the internet. I avoid the socials when I can, but to ignore their existence is to toil forever in obscurity.
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