Day before Ash Wednesday

Things I use social media for:

Stay connected to my friends and strangers who I admire
Current events
Current opinions on current events
Keeping a finger on the pulse of social events
Sharing what I'm doing
Wielding it as a tool to control my narrative as a cute creative
Announcing workshops/commission opportunities
Monitoring social status/influence
A continuous tether to social movements
Contact with the way language is changing
Keeping up-to-date with trends
Inspiration
To suck up the times when I don't know what else to do and simply doomscoll

Tools I will use to meet these needs outside of social media:

Fliers, bulletin board, the free weeklys for mainstream local social events
Relying on friends in the network to let me know
Newspapers, magazines, (New York Times, New Yorker Magazine) for current events and trends. I only ever read captions and headlines anyway. How hard can it be to flip through the New Yorker at the library once a week like I caught Josh doing once?
Defining myself by some other metric than overshares. Most likely a trust fall but also this blog, this website, little guerilla projects
Cindy Crabb wrote "Creating a visible public presence" as a means to cultivate a shitty little town into a punk rock town and I coudn't agree more. "Posters, flyers, graffiti, public art. Nothing is more depressing that a town with punks that just post on the internet, nothing is better than walking around a shitty town and finding an Anarchy sign spray painted behind a grocery store." Also Cindy Crabb says more in one fucking sentence than I could in an entire book.
Graphic novels from the libary to suck up the idle time. I also have Josh James' zine on my bedside and other books I've picked up weird places.

It's like I can never open the window wide enough. With my eyes I vacuum up every little shred of light. Continuing to tuck myself into the nook of my phone. The endless rooms of an ever extending mansion. To be connected. To be part of something. And to participate in that thing. The place to curate a perfect home, despite all the plugs. We don't even see the advertisements anymore? They're part of it at this point.

Joe today, on the couch. Less nervous that before. Both of us. Mad with a kind of desperate fire. Eating messy greasy tacos I made.

Crafting the recipe for the perfect tortillas.

Step one: End the federally funded terrorism at the border.
Step two: End the continuous threat of violence and deportation of white nationalism
Step three: Amalgamate as a society. Learn Spanish to fluency. Have an integrated friend group.
Step four: Then you will make the perfect tortillas. Because someone will teach you.

The protest. Honking horns. A woman yelling out "HONK ONCE FOR TACOS AND TWICE FOR TAMALES" and just laying it on. And then just wanting to puke they had to be there in the first place, being brave, deserving so much more than the bullshit they've been handed. I'm reminded this is irl.
In the screen: The man in the PTA meeting talking about his son crying after school from racial-based bullying. The white dad saying "then why'd you come?" and everyone screaming him down.

How many of these glimpses shape my reality? What will happen when I "see less"?

Not everything is for you to sieve through your main character syndrome Rachie (that's what Joe calls me). What you see is what you're meant to see. What you're meant to know will find you, whether you're looking out the iphone window or the real window.

Opening the window wide enough. Closing the other one.

Listening: "Montage (feat. Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe) Radio" from Swiss Army Man
Listening: Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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