In The Belly Of The Beast

November 6, 2023 / animar64 / 3 Comments

Daily Prompt: How Do You Manage Screen Time For Yourself?

Artist Unknown

I realized that the internet was a problem when it became clear that if you did not have a social media presence you did not exist.

Not invited to a gathering?

The reason, you would find out in a message that started at the end of a row of crying emojis or that one with the face waving it’s puffy hands in the air, was that you weren’t on ( Facebook, Instangram-whatever ) and that you must have been ‘missed’.

Fine. I created an FB page and filled it with as many pictures of cats or pictures of talking cats or quotes I made up myself and attributed to nonexistent people – I even gave them a year of birth and death in a lot of those. They were stupid quotes and most of them were spelled wrong and made no sense.

One day a friend of mine sent me an email because she tried to track down the author my ‘quote’ and said she couldn’t find them ( duh ) and that I should pull it because it was ‘false news’ .

I told her that as an FYI the cats and dogs from the I Can Has Cheezeburger site were made up and that the only people on my page were political trolls so I sincerely hoped my garbage posts were choking their newsfeeds to death because I thought Facebook was a stain on humanity and that it should be put down like a rabid animal.

We had that exchange in 2006 and guess what. I was right. FB is a stain on humanity and has impacted a lot of people’s ability to maintain and form genuine relationships.

Artist Unknown

I have this strict rule.

I use my computer and notebook FOR WRITING ONLY.

When it comes to my phone- I have a coach.

He pulls it out of my hand when he thinks it’s been there for too long. . He sits on it. He has been known to pick it up and drop it random places like the bathroom, our patio and for reasons only he understands, he will drop it in the box of plushie toys he doesn’t play with:

Hamish Macbeth
Photo P.C. Knapp

That’s right- my dog monitors my screen time.

When I was suffering from and being treated for depression my dog, Hamish Macbeth, would sense when I was ‘disconnected’ and he would get me to engage. He would bring me toys, he would sit next to me and lean into me. He would lift my hand up. Believe it or not those gentle reminders to be ‘present’ were very helpful for someone who was trapped in their own head.

I can only assume Hamish sees my phone as a problem because when I’m on it I must put out that ‘disconnect’ vibe and he does what his instincts are telling him to do. He wants me ‘back’ in the moment.

So now when I’m on my phone this little bell goes off in my head and not matter what I’m doing I’ll actually shut it off and put it away.

I think it doesn’t hurt to know when to walk away from the screen- of course you run the risk that a bunch of advertisers and people harvesting ‘likes’ for their posts will miss you- but really- do they matter that much to you?

Because they shouldn’t.

One Of A Kind

November 2, 2023 / animar64 / 3 Comments

RDP Thursday: EXCLUSIVE

Artist Unknown

When I was about 10 years old, I wanted to join one of those clubs that girls used to join- you sold cookies and earned badges and you got to make cool crafts and go on camping trips.

My friend belonged to this great club and she took me to her next meeting and asked her Troop Leader if I could join their group.

I showed up at the next meeting with my friend- who was excited that we were going to get to do this great thing together ( we had been separated at the beginning of the school year and were in different classes ).

She knocked on the door and her Troop Leader opened it and my friend launched into her introductions.

Her Troop leader took one look at me and she had this big sunny smile so I thought I was going to be able to join and she said, ” Oh. I’m sorry. We have a full group, so maybe you will be able to find another Troop to join.”

It was a small town- there wasn’t another troop- not unless I tried a different city and in those days there were no buses and I did not come from a family where my Dad was going to drive me around to do kid stuff.

After her pep talk she placed her hand and my friend’s should and gently pulled her in through the door and then she shut the door on my face.

Artist Unknown

It’s not like I went out of my way to join exclusive clubs- it’s just that I didn’t find out they were exclusive right off the bat. Sometimes it depressed me that I didn’t have the look or the attitude fit in- that I didn’t understand how to mold into a ‘better ‘ version of me.

On the other hand, sometimes rejection isn’t such a bad thing.

A Winter Tradition

November 2, 2023November 2, 2023 / animar64 / Leave a comment

WP Daily Prompt asks: What’s something you believe everyone should know?

Illustration by French impressionist Édouard Manet for the Stéphane Mallarmé translation of “The Raven”, 1875

Did you know that it was on bleak December evening that the Raven made his way into a scholar’s home, that in the dead of winter the Raven took it’s place above his chamber door where it perched on a bust of Pallas and drove the unamed narrator of the poem stark raving mad?

I think everyone should know this because during the Victorian Era, telling ghost stories was the thing to do on those long, cold, dark evenings. When you look at it that way you can see that the Raven a Christmastime Ghost story as opposed to the Halloween story it has been morphed into.

The Raven (Le corbeau): Flying Raven (ex libris)
Édouard Manet1875

My own family would tell ghost stories during the winter- with the bulk of them being told during our Christmas gatherings.

We would always find a way to work stories about the supernatural into our gatherings, but during the winter there was a a tradition we followed without even realizeing it.

We specifically told ghost stories- and all of them if you were to ask- were absolutely true.

Every winter there has been a slew of articles popping up on line advocating for brining this tradition back.

If you aren’t into telling stories at gatherings, there are books with stories from the Victorian Era that focus on ghost stories that were told during Christmas/ Winter that you can pick up and enjoy instead:

I love this one:

^{The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals}

^{During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of ghostly tales in this volume.}

Along with planning my family’s holiday meal- and as I cook and shop and hope for snow, I am also planning on what stories ( or Whoppers as my Grandpa Bert would call them ) I will be telling.

Here is a link to a great article about this tradition. It’s from 2017 and it’s informative and a great read- who knows? Maybe you’ll be inspired to try this out yourself:

A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories