RMiddleton

During the time that I've been arranging this blog just so I have barely made a peep on popular social media. Today I dropped the following note there:

What I've been up to / where I've been online

Many times already I have expressed my dislike for commercial platforms. I don't need to convince anyone reading this to agree with me. If you are enjoying your online habits why should I hector you? In social media there's the social and there's the media. After many years I'm choosing the media over the social. Not that my preferred hangout is a technologically advanced and beautiful medium. No, it's about the oldest and plainest online venue. I'm enjoying simple blogging. What I mean when I say that I'm choosing medium over social is that I feel able to amass a “body of work” there & the very fact that that sounds so delusional tells me that I'm finally doing something right for me. All the years of interacting in various proprietary online spaces feel like ideas written on notebook paper and thrown out the window of a speeding car. In a rainstorm. It's too fast moving for me and it feels too temporary. On my chosen blog platform there literally are no bells and whistles. The words sit still on pages that I largely control. I have the possibility to think. To see themes in my ideas. The mere possibility that I might revisit past ideas, and over time shape them into something better is the definition of encouraging. It's long been one of my core beliefs that the main cause for most problems in the US is lack of reflection. The common trait of all mainstream media is that the stream rushes quickly and without pause. This pace is incompatible with deep thinking as I understand it. All caught up in this stream, passively or actively, experience cognitive difficulty. Yes I am saying that people who are sharing ideas on TV and other fast media are unlikely to be thinking deeply. The rest of us non famouses who are consuming ideas delivered in a fast stream find ourselves trying to take sips from a firehose. We get overwhelmed. We struggle to think. We feel exhausted. I don't know how often I'll keep coming back to share on the fast stream. I know my mind feels clearer elsewhere. And it's not that there's no social aspect to my preferred media. It's just so much slower and simpler that I might be able to think and reply substantively. I might not! Because I still carry with me my own struggles that interfere with happy socializing and my own ability to function.

As of this moment I feel hopeful when I spend time at https://dotart.blog/rmiddleton/