Thought I’d hop on here after taking yesterday off. If you follow me regularly, you’ve noticed that my #HistoryMonday & #CurrentEventFriday posts are more sporadic lately. I wanted to try and explain that phenomenon and share some reflections I’ve had lately.
No doubt, your social media feeds are filled with new information about Covid-19 and protests about race in addition to the usual distractions. My feed is no different, and as I skim through the feeds my brain is overwhelmed by opinions from all sides and I’m about to have a breakdown. What’s particularly frustrating is that I’m getting upset at posts from friends and other personalities on both sides of the political spectrum. I believe that Black lives have not always mattered and that we have work to do on race relations, but some of the ideas are ridiculous. I also believe that law enforcement is a challenging profession, but reform needs to happen to add accountability for malfeasance and/or bias with certain individuals. As far as the Coronavirus, I’m getting frustrated that the WHO, CDC, and other medical experts are seemingly taking a stab in the dark every other week on how the virus behaves—masks are necessary for healthcare workers, everybody should wear them, only symptomatic folks should wear them. Besides that, lockdowns didn’t happen soon enough, they were necessary, they were harmful, or protests might be safe as the virus is sleeping. Particularly galling is that funerals with hundreds of people for slain black folk are okay but not for your grandmother because…reasons.
While I might normally agree or ‘like’ posts from friends, family, or other posters on posts that may have political undertones, I’m trying to maintain more radio silence and avoid reacting or commenting publicly. I may add a quip on Twitter since it doesn’t affect my vocation as negatively as if I posted on Facebook. This isn’t to say that I don’t have internal comments and reactions, I just don’t share them publicly. Plus, there’s enough arguing and commenting from everybody else that my voice would get lost.
Many times, I’ll fast Facebook during Lent, and that’s healthy for the 40 days I’m off the site. I probably should fast other social media during that time too. With the hatefulness and insanity on social media, I’m about ready for 2nd Lent so I could get off social media for a while. Even public pages for businesses and organizations have quite a few hateful and terrible comments. As I read comments on a post from NASCAR recently, the racist and mean comments about how a young boy sang the National Anthem were shocking and infuriating. Unfortunately, since I’m not fasting social media and I see all the crap on it, my brain isn’t in the mood to process writing about history, social issues, and current events. Besides, there’s enough history (or is it histrionics?) and current events going on in your feed, that you can get your fix from others besides myself.
Luckily, my creative side is not as affected by the social media outrage and I can still do my Poetry Wednesday posts. I may also try to put together some travel guides for the next few weeks since that’s generally a positive post and if you’re like me, going on vacation sounds great right about now. Hopefully, social media and the outrage culture that’s dominating the news cycle right now will calm down or my brain gets a reset from vacation that my usual posting for Mondays and Fridays will be back soon. Stay tuned!
Is your brain struggling to function lately?
On the Radar 