Saturday, February 25, 2017

Five Hundred Words



           Five hundred words? How can I possibly write a coherent story in five hundred words (or less)? That’s so few words; and like a fool, I’ve just wasted thirty-one of them. You see, there’s this contest. They’ve given me a plot. Now, I only need to use it. But here I sit, in front of my keyboard, with a case of writer’s block that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, writing alliterative cliché’s that I know I’m better than. And now I only have four hundred and four more words to develop character and setting. Staring at this paragraph doesn’t seem to be helping. Perhaps I need to get out of the house. Perhaps I need to quit wasting words with unnecessary words like “unnecessary” and “perhaps.”
            I take the bus downtown, to the market, with the idea that getting lost in a crowd might somehow spark my creativity, might help to find my story. By the time I get there, I’m down to three hundred and thirty words. I’m walking around, proceeding about my business eyeballing trinkets and ignoring buskers, all the while waiting on a strange person to thrust a mysterious object into my hand. I know this will happen because that’s the plot that’s been decided upon in advance. And then it happens. With two hundred and seventy-eight words to go, I’m caught in a crowd, confronted suddenly by a strange person, who thrusts a mysterious object into my hand, and without a word, disappears. The mysterious object, “What is it?” you want to know. It’s an envelope, sealed, with a handful of words written on one side: “Don’t open until you get home.”
            So, I start for home, making my way out of the crowd, away from the market, towards the bus stop. I check the schedule: no bus for an hour. With only one hundred and eighty-seven words left, I don’t have time to wait. And so I run, down First Avenue, a right on Belmont, over the Morrison Bridge, east towards home. The envelope weighs heavy on my mind: What could possibly be in it? Why do I have to wait until I get home to open it? What would happen if I didn’t? I consider opening it right here and now, but with only one hundred and fifteen words left, I don’t dare chance it.
            My muscles ache, I’m drenched in sweat, and with only a mile to go, I’m stopped by someone I know. “What’s the hurry?” she asks.
            “No time to talk,” I yell in full stride, “I don’t have enough words left for you.”
            I know it was rude, but what can you do when you’re on a budget? I reach my house, unlock the door, rush to my desk, and go to open the envelope with thirty-one words to spare. I tear it apart and look inside, and there it is, exactly what I knew it would be: the end of this story, because I’m out of words…




            

Friday, February 17, 2017

The Return of This Digital Life


Five days without my smartphone or the internet and the world did not end. Go figure. When I returned on the sixth day, I was so overwhelmed by notifications, emails, and messages that I decided to stay away for one more day. But now I’m back. Here’s what I learned:

#1) Whether you like it or not, your digital life will go on without you. Even though I was detached from social media, social media was not detached from me. Since I was away with friends—friends with smartphones of their own—new photos of me found their way onto the internet. I was “tagged” and they were “liked”, all without my consent, as if anyone in your vicinity with a smartphone has become part of your own personal Paparazzi. But that’s not all. Even those who were hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, continued to interact with my digital life even though they knew I wouldn’t respond. Some tagged me in Facebook posts. Others commented on old posts. New posts were pasted on my wall. I was sent text messages and emails. Interestingly, I had no missed calls, as if people feel comfortable digitally contacting a “ghost”, but not personally. (p.s. I apologize for not “liking” or replying to the posts, comments, etc., that I was tagged in while on my digital vacation, but with the current real-time pace of social media, I’m not sure what the proper protocol is concerning days-old posts.)

#2) It’s perfectly okay to not take photos of everything you do. I traveled to a small town in Washington that is modeled after a Bavarian Village. Simply put, it is a photographer’s wet dream. Luckily, there were thousands of other “photographers” there, all taking the same pictures I would have taken (probably not as good as the ones I would have taken, but nonetheless). Plus, if I really need a photo to remember the trip, my beautiful girlfriend took about seven thousand of her own. And like the old saying says: “A photo might be worth a thousand words, but your memories are worth a thousand photos.” (I may have just made that up.)

#3) Few people actually make it past the first couple sentences of anything posted on the internet. I know this to be true from the comments I received last week when I wrote about how I was leaving for a digital vacation. Several people thought I was leaving my digital life for good even though I clearly stated that my exit was only temporary. Apparently, people only care to read headlines these days, which explains so much about our current political situation. It also means I can write whatever bat-shit crazy thing I want right now and be confident that not many people will actually read it. Which brings us to:

#4) My digital vacation was extremely refreshing, like taking an ice-cold shower or running naked through a snowstorm. I highly recommend the next time you travel away from your safe space for an extended period of time, leave all your digital devices at home. I promise that the world won’t end, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find greater appreciation in your actual life—you know, the one away from the screen.


Bonus: If a photo is worth a thousand words, and this piece is about 500, does that mean it’s worth half a photo? 



Friday, February 10, 2017

This Digital Life

I’m going on a digital vacation. I’m traveling hundreds of miles away from my safe space and leaving my phone and computer at home. I know what you’re thinking: That’s crazy! I know you’re thinking this because when I told people about this idea they all replied (in so many words): That’s crazy!

Actually, there were two reactions. There was: What if there’s an emergency? In which I replied: You do realize there was a time before Smartphones? A time called: All of human existence. Seriously, what if there’s an emergency? What did people do before Smartphones when there was an emergency? They dealt with it, that’s what they did. Plus, we do live in a digital world now. Certainly, in the case of an actual emergency, there will be people in the vicinity that have a Smartphone of their own. It’s not like I’m vacationing in Antarctica.

The second response was: How are you going to take pictures. Simple: I’m not going to. It turns out, you don’t have to take pictures of everything you do.

A short digital biography: My digital life was born three years ago. It started with a simple website, an unusual blog, and my entry into the world of Facebook. I didn’t go through digital puberty until October of 2016. That’s when I got my first Smartphone. In only four months I’ve become fixated on Instagram, Insta-news, podcasts, the stock market, and Tetris—all things that I never thought about before the Smartphone. Only four long months and I already feel it’s time for a digital vacation.

After some consideration, I’ve come to realize that this digital vacation can end in only three ways:

A) When I return, the Internet will no longer exist, which will affect everyone, but also means I’m a trendsetter.

B) My digital death. This means that I come to the conclusion that my digital-life is not worth my actual real-life time. Due to the psychological addiction of Smartphones, this will certainly become a thing in the near future. We will see the digital deaths of our friends, which is sad, because many of my closest friends are in the digital world. If I don’t come back, I would only hope that my digital friends give me the first ever digital funeral.

C) I return to my digital life and tell everyone all about my digital vacation. If that’s the outcome, I’ll see you next week…digitally, of course.



Friday, February 3, 2017

The Last of the Hard Men




               I needed out of the city. I needed to get away from that urban lifestyle which seemed obsessed with cool clothes, hip hairdos, stylish staches, multi-flavored macchiatos, soymilk smoothies, yuppie yoga, or whatever else was trendy at the time. I longed for proof that hard men still existed. The kind I had seen in the movies when I was a kid. The kind filled with courage, honor, nerve, and grit.
            So I headed away from the city, through the suburbs, past the small towns, deep into the wilderness, until I found a random tavern, a one-room shack whose sign simply said: BAR. I parked my bike, walked inside, ordered a beer, and waited.
            It didn’t take long before he walked in. He was everything I dreamed he would be. I studied him carefully. He was tall and muscular, with a jaw line right out of a John Wayne movie. He wore an old cowboy hat, flannel shirt, leather jacket, ripped jeans, and work boots, all of it filthy. His eyes were cold, his beard thick, and his face tanned like a catcher’s mitt. He had a scar running across his brow, a couple chipped teeth, and fingers missing from both hands. When he ordered his drink, he only needed to growl one word: WHISKEY.
            There he was, right in front of my eyes, close enough that I could smell pine tar on his hands and the tobacco in his lip. I wanted to touch him, to make sure he was real, but the bowie knife that hung from his belt and the pistol hugging his ankle were clear signs not to get too close.
            So I just stared, carefully examining the proof that sat next to me. The proof that courage, honor, nerve, and grit were not virtues of the past! The proof that there was at least one last hard man left on Earth…and then he pulled out a Smartphone and started playing Candy Crush.