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I am offering you this embarrassingly candid recording (it would be exaggerating to call it a podcast) as an example of how addicted I’ve been to social media, recorded last week. It’s not edited, so listen at your own risk.
When I say addicted to social media, it’s not tongue-in-cheek. I have navigated substance addictions, and my social media addiction has been just as destructive, albeit in different ways. I foresee a lot of learning on my part as I continue to abstain.
I have now been off social media for a little over a week- my Instagram and Facebook are deactivated, and my Twitter is active only to post links to this newsletter. It’s blocked everywhere— on my phone and computer. For the first four or five days I felt a surprisingly visceral longing to be on social media. Mostly, it was the worry of being out of touch with people I care about, as well as not being able to promote my writing or projects.
It’s telling that quitting drinking has been easier for me than quitting social media.
I transferred my sense of striving to my newsletter. Last week I watched a bunch of videos about how to grow and promote my newsletter, and realized I was doing exactly what I’d set out not to do: make something that is geared towards the “market",” rather than writing simply about my experiences and things I am loving and/or struggling with. Do I want to grow my newsletter? Of course! Would I love for you to share this and encourage others to subscribe? Yes! (I am inwardly laughing as I embed this “share” button below)—
— But, nothing I write in this newsletter will be anything but what I’m feeling, what I’m loving, what I am struggling with, what I am doing. Beyond that, I can’t control anything. I’m honored that anyone spends any of their time reading my words at all.
Many moons ago (like, lots and lots of moons) I ran away from home after being gang-raped and subsequently ostracized at my high-school in Olympia, only a few months after I’d moved there with my mom and stepdad, from Renton, WA. As a perpetual new kid, I’d always been a tryhard, diehard striver, wanting to be accepted and loved instead of ignored or made fun of. I also lived with the deep knowledge that I was, at my core, a terrible person, and didn’t deserve good things. When I returned to Olympia, after living on a farm in Northern California, an alternative school was opening and asked me to attend. It was there that I began to learn how capitalism poisoned everything. Capitalism is a for-profit system, where growth must be infinite. Capitalism ran the beauty industry, which had taught my mother, and then me, to hate our bodies. Capitalism eradicated the wolves in the western United States, a keystone species integral to ecological balance. Capitalism marketed the vodka I poured into my Jack-in-the-Box soda cup and brought into the classroom with me. At Avanti (the name of the school), I learned to look beyond the horizon of capitalism, towards a world where art for art’s sake was valued, where people were treated equally instead of exploited, where we saw each animal and insect and human being as valuable— not because of a net worth, but because every living thing, including our earth, was inevitably permeated with inherent value.
Throughout my life I’ve felt at odds with the culture I live in and what we’re taught to sacrifice as humans in order to conform to what’s expected of us, or even simply buy essentials such as toilet paper and clothing. Buying clothing is a political act, because our globalized culture oppresses the powerless in order to provide inexpensive clothing to the powerless. Does one powerless have more power than the other? In some ways, yes. Are we all pawns here? In some ways, yes. Especially if you were born without resources that link you to the ones who own the means of production, i.e., us.
These are things I think about all the time, and I think about them in relation to social media, and how I engage with social media and the wider world. It all breeds a specific kind of narcissism, doesn’t it? We can’t necessarily fault ourselves. No need to feel ashamed about it, is what I tell myself. But also: wake up.
My alternative school taught me that we can build systems outside of the already established systems. In our classrooms we watched film noir, read A People’s History of the United States, learned the meaning of anarchy, spoke openly about queerness and our eating disorders and sat at round tables with our teachers. In a public school.
I taught a yoga class, which other students could take, for credit.
We can build systems outside of the already established systems.
I, an individual, am a system.
It is okay to acknowledge our individual power.
It is okay to acknowledge our powerlessness.
On New Year’s Day I pulled a past, present, future spread from a hand-me-down tarot deck I was gifted. This is from the Iris Oracle deck. The three cards felt spot on. The “something that is never truly yours” is money. Money, the thing I stress about the most, and the things that doesn’t belong to anybody. Pieces of cotton and nickel and copper. When traveling, I love holding unfamiliar money. Often I think of ripping money apart. tearing bills in two. We could rip up all the money. What would our lives look like without money?
As far as my dreams? What are those? I have an apartment. A steady job. I once dreamed of being a well-known author, but now I only want to be able to write, which I’m doing right now. You’re reading my words. My dreams are very close.
What are your dreams?
If a light shines on us, what is exposed?
On Thursday I went to Carkeek Park by myself. I’d been there earlier in the day with the boys, but we left their bubble machine on the beach and after work I went back to retrieve it. I got the little machine, whose button sometimes gets stuck in “on” mode, and put it in my Prius, then took a walk up into the park. It was raining a little bit. I found a fort with a garland hung inside its curved entrance. Lichen hung from branches like overgrown mint-green beards.
Winter is moss season in the Pacific Northwest. Did you know that the air hovering above moss is its own kind of ecosystem? And when moss wants its spores to fly along on the breeze it must grow a head higher than all the other little strands of moss in its community? I learned this from Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Gathering Moss. I’ve written about the book before. Now whenever I touch moss I think of what it takes for more moss to be made. Isn’t it incredible, how alive everything is?
The boys, at the park a few days ago, asked me: is everything alive? I said yes.
Walking through the park I passed only two people. Birds, hiding from the rain, chirped, and I pictured little lasers beaming through the treetops. In colder places the ferns die, but here they grow gigantic, and I thought of the forests as they must have been when Indigenous people were the only ones foraging in these parts. I thought of what the forests must have looked like before any human contact. My footsteps leave footprints that will soon disappear. We are here for such a short time. I touched the rough leaves of the ferns and felt the tiny circles of spores on their undersides.
On my way out of the forest I stopped and leaned against a cedar. I let my whole body rest inside the curve of its body, and felt its immense solidity and peace. I breathed in, visualizing the xylem and phloem like little highways inside the tree, carrying water and nutrients. My fingerpads gently tapped its smooth bark. I could have stayed there a long time, but was conscious of someone coming up the trail, so I peeled myself off and away.
Next weekend I start my 200 hour yoga teacher training through Sangha Yoga here in Seattle. The training is positioned towards diversity and inclusion, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it and excited to see how what I learn informs and transforms my life. I’ve been given a scholarship. A blessing. For over two decades I wanted to do a YTT, and now is the time, mid-pandemic. Of course, it’s all via Zoom. I miss seeing people in person, don’t you? A room full of people sharing air is something we really took for granted.
What I loved this week:
This interview (there’s audio and transcription) with Jaron Lanier was helpful for me to listen to. He’s a silicon valley veteran who now writes and speaks about mass addiction to social media.
Here in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Richard Knowles made a tiny Rosebud Motel. I hope to visit it before it’s taken down!
I’ve been OBSESSED with Julien Baker lately. Here’s her live set at KEXP, and a little bit about her from Jia Tolentino at The New Yorker.
I may have watched the entire first season of Bridgerton this week. The holiday gave me time? I thoroughly enjoyed the series, which is lighthearted, full of lots of great characters and beautiful costumes, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. I did wish for better camera work and lighting, and more queerness, but one can’t have everything.
Have you heard of LIVt? Read about and listen to her here, and make sure to read this Medium post . Her music is multilayered, and her newest album Flowers in the Void has been on repeat for me.
As someone who’s number one Spotify song of 2020 was forest sounds, I adored this piece about people who binged on white noise in our pandemic year.
I’ve been meditating for an hour every morning, listening to a recording of S.N. Goenka from my Vipassana days. It’s not easy, but it feels good to do it.
Books:
This week I read The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas, a Norwegian author. The story is set in the cold late autumn, the darkness of winter, and the ice-breaking early spring, and follows two girls, Siss and Unn. I devoured it. Sparse and impactful, the prose resembled poetry in the way some sentences were given an entire line to themselves. The story was enigmatic, yet forward moving— a tale of friendship, but also a fable with a moral lesson. The book was sent out via Phinney by Post (or, rather, I picked it up).
For months I’ve been wanting to read The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh. I’m near the end of it, and am enthralled with its poetic sentences and open examination of familial relationships, abandonment, regret, and eating disorders. It’s surprised me. I’m not sure what I expected, but I am especially taken with the voice of the story— arresting and melancholic, yet hopeful.
I just finished James Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. I clutched it to my chest when I (digitally) turned the last page. Its richness of emotion, depth of exploration, and autobiographical quality was wholly unique. Its characters, of course, were loosely based on people Baldwin knew, and much of what he struggled with personally was present in the book. I am currently reading his novels in chronological order, so I’ll be reading Giovanni’s Room next (for the second time). I am interested in how Baldwin examined similar subjects from many angles. As writers in the “market” we’re told we must write certain things at certain times, but the truth of it is, we must write what we must write, or we aren’t writing what’s true to ourselves at all.
Tonight I’ll tuck in with Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness.
Please, if you feel so inclined, comment and/or share Gathering. I am exploring what this newsletter can be, and will be adding a Thursday installation in the next couple months. Maybe yoga videos and guided meditations? Thoughts on writing? I’m interested in what you’d find helpful. I’d love to hear your ideas, feedback, and thoughts.
With love,
Stacy
My Name is Stacy, and I am a Social Media Addict