Sports are back!
We’re in Week 2 of the NFL season, the Ravens look as terrifyingly good as always, and Lamar is still the greatest show on turf. It’s taken some time, but I’m finally starting to get a handle on where everyone landed in the off-season. Football is back, baby!
Just kidding! I’m not going to write about sports – I just wanted to see if I could trick anyone into reading by dropping a few football references early on (the Ravens game hasn’t even started yet). Did I get you? Good. The least you can do is keep reading to the end.
I think we can all agree that the American doomsday spectacle reached its nadir this week. We’re in the midst of a global pandemic (new way of life, record unemployment, economic recession, loss of life), political stupidity on all fronts (Ted Cruz for the Supreme Court), five months of nationwide protests, horrific wildfires out West and Justice Ruth Badger Ginsberg passed away on Friday. I’m out of breath just typing it all out.
At the risk of alienating you all with one more anti-news screed – I promise this is the last one for a while – I found myself, amidst all of this turmoil/hardship/panic, completely disinterested in any headlines over the past few days. I mean it. Maybe the fires extinguished any tolerance I had left for hysterical headlines, but for whatever reason I found myself unwilling to open a single piece of reporting. I still have not read anything about RBG, although at some point I’ll want to spend some time reading her obituaries. Here’s some of the stuff I passed over:
- The Atlantic: America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral, Coffee Rust Is Going to Ruin Your Morning and Why Everything Is Sold Out
- NY Times: Human Weakness Is Responsible for This Poisonous Air, Is Your State at Risk of an Election Meltdown? and Why You Should Care About TikTok
- WSJ: Pelosi’s Nervous Majority, Democrat Madness and Liberating Pennsylvania From Lockdown
I basically opted out of hourly opportunities to elevate my heart rate and sour my mood.
My body now reacts the same way to these articles as it does when I’m forced to watch a TV commercial: with physical queasiness. I’m getting so accustomed to life without daily news that my body won’t even tolerate it in small doses. Yikes.
We all know what the next couple of weeks will be like with a Supreme Court vacancy, Trump in the White House and one month to go until the election. It’s going to be a madhouse. And each of us, unless there are some legislators or highly influential donors out there, is absolutely powerless over the outcome. I will be taking some time in the next couple of weeks to remind myself of the one prayer I feel truly speaks to me:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
If you’re considering taking the plunge and cutting the feed, I’d recommend reading this piece from Ryan Holiday:
“Most of the things that you read aren’t going to go anywhere—it’s not revolutionary, it’s not new, it’s not important. These are press releases, government statements, manufactured hype, speculation, opinions about things. Why? Because reporters are trying to write 12 posts a day. Reporters are trying to beat other outlets by five seconds so they can get all the traffic for a ‘scoop’ that is going to be rendered irrelevant by the ‘scoop’ that comes out tomorrow.“
A lot of what I did consume this week is ancient – five, ten years old – and is still relevant and worthwhile. I’ve started to date my links with the explicit purpose of highlighting how much good stuff we’re overlooking by only reading the latest and greatest headlines.
Anyway, at a certain point my obsession with pointing out the negativity in the media will become negative in itself, so I am taking a break from anti-news grandstanding from here on out.
The Post Office is also back!
In a surprising development, I received this card in the mail from the Post Office:
It’s a smart gesture from a postal service that has lost the faith of a lot of people in the span of a few months, but it’s also a reminder how unlikely it is that an already low-turnout population will all of sudden jump through the necessary hoops to mail in a ballot. Add postage to the envelope? Seriously? Do they know how few people own stamps these days, or even know where to buy them?
Also, as a side note, it took multiple weeks for a postcard from Portland to reach my grandfather in Maryland.
Can’t wait for Election Day!
The Social Dilemma
Here’s a question for you readers: When was the last time you simultaneous screamed into a pillow, slammed your ahead against the wall and pulled out some of your hair? Not for a while? Then you must not have watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma this weekend!
Quick disclaimer: I am not a fan of documentaries. They are cinematic productions intended to promote opinions, and in order to do that they tell a very one-sided story. There’s no interviewer pressing the director’s claims – there’s only you, the viewer, who is generally trusting of anything labeled as objective fact (which most documentaries are).
But even so, The Social Dilemma was so, so worth watching. We all know, and have known for a while, how invasive, unhealthy and pointless the vast majority of our time on social media is. We know these networks are responsible for the amplification of extreme political views, increases in anxiety and depression, and loads of unconscious consumption. We know this because we all check our phones constantly, feel jealous of our friends’ glamorous lives and stunning vacations, and buy things from sales we never gave two sh*ts about until an ad popped onto the screen. I don’t usually like to say something is universal, but this time I have to: We know social media is a net negative.
Please watch the documentary. It does not allow platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to defend themselves, and it should. But the group of former tech executives, telling you something you know to be true about the platforms they created, will be enough to make your stomach churn. The Social Dillemma inspired me to go a week with no phone, and I will report back on the experience in my next newsletter. My goal is not to denounce technology and drop off the face of the Earth, but instead to reevaluate which parts of my digital life I really need, and which can go straight in the trash.
I think it’s going to be up to my generation, the young millennials, to limit this stuff now before we’re unable to set any meaningful restrictions with our children. The stats about teenage girls and cutting from the movie were staggering – a 169% increase in self-harm among pre-teen girls since social media became mainstream – and if I can be part of any movement to cut these platforms out of our lives now then I will gladly do so.
The Website
I have a few updates, the first of which is this: I’ve added pictures to all of my personal essays and short stories. I think it helps make my website less ugly, and also gives you readers a better idea of what you’re getting yourself into when you click on something. Many of the images are stock photos that I think work well, but if you see anything that makes the site look like the back pages of WebMD please let me know.
I also got back into the swing of things and posted two new pieces to the site – a slightly dystopian short story about returning to the office, and a personal essay about my English conversation classes with Centro. If you enjoyed Hola Emmett or Centro NYC, you’ll probably like this one.
One of the strangest things about having a website is that I have zero clue who visits the site and when. On Thursday I logged on and discovered my site was viewed thirty times – a far cry from the ten I’ve become accustomed to – so whoever you are, thank you! The dream is that one day I wake up to 100,000 views and an exploded website for having written something that catches fire in Estonia, or Ghana, or some other far-off place where I picture these blogging miracles happen.
I’ll end with a great quote from Jamie Foxx, whose Tim Ferriss interview I’ve linked below:
“I talk to my sister all the time. [I say] Girl, you better start having some fun; we’re gonna be gone in a minute. You’re gonna look back and say, shit, I should have been laughing and now I’m dead.”
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
Back to the Office – Returning to the office in a not-so-distant dystopian future (Fiction)
Intercambio – Arguably the best part of my week
What I’m Reading:
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning – Haruki Murakami
“One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.”
Peculiar Benefits – Roxanne Gay, The Rumpus, 2012
“We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say this is my truth and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.“
What I’m Listening To:
Jamie Foxx on Workout Routines, Success Habits, and Untold Hollywood Stories – The Tim Ferriss Show, 2015
“So one day, my boy Brian brings in this kid. He has a backpack on. His jaw’s a little busted. His name is Kanye West.”