Dear reader,
If you aren't in Australia, the title is likely to make little sense. Melbourne's lockdown just got extended another two weeks. It's been so long since I've been able to shred the dance floor. I'll quickly be the first to admit that this is what I think, and that my 'dancing' likely mortifies onlookers, but sometimes you gotta just let it out.
We must remember something important though. You can't lose hope. Yes, it's another two weeks, and I know how hard it is right now. We all do. But now is quite possibly the best time in your life, depending on your situation, to really work on something that you otherwise wouldn't have the time or opportunity to do so!
I could talk all day about how fucked this is, how annoying it is to not be able to get out and about and see friends and family, how frustrating it is when people break the rules and compromise everything, how fucking god damn boring it can be meandering around your dwelling back and forth (is that my sock?), rechecking the fridge constantly (oh we have peanut butter. wait why is it in the fridge), we all could..
But why do this, why should we all talk about how fucked this is? We all know how fucked it is. Why not talk about something else, like.. have you learnt anything new? Read anything interesting lately? Watched a good film? A bad one? Any good books you're enjoying? Something you drew.. or wrote? We gotta change the conversation, with yourself and those around you.
But I don't want to be overly unrealistically positive about this all. At the end of the day, it is hard. For some more than others. But you must remember that it's okay to be sad. There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you need to be sad. But try not to wallow in it too much. Do yourself little favors, send yourself a letter, buy yourself a gift for getting this far, like a plant. A covid plant (: We can be so hard on ourselves.
This may seem a lil controversial, but just on people breaking the rules.. Just the other day, a group of people gathered for some sort of family occasion. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but essentially there were two positive cases from said event, and it's all the fuss right now on social media. So much hate and disgust. Yes, what they did is wrong. I'm fairly certain they're completely aware. But there is another problem here.
Now I'm not excusing their behavior, this isn't what I'm doing. I'm just saying we got to be better than this. You can't send death threats to people. It's inexcusable. And all these keyboard warriors stalking their socials, sending horrible messages to these individuals and others involved or in similar positions. They know they fucked up. They are completely aware of the ramifications, and they've been fined and will quarantine. Just stop injecting so much pain and negativity into the blood stream of our feeds right now. Whether that be social or conversationally. Life's hard enough at the moment.
Something else that's been on my mind is that I think big tech has fucked us up. Pre covid, we were all living pretty FAST. Constantly and rapidly doing something to doing something else. Scrolling to talking to working... Very little 'idle' time. Time to just sit, and be still. And it's become so glaringly apparent during these lockdowns how bad we are at dealing with this. This idling time. We think we always have to be doing something, but this couldn't be further from the truth! And big tech has a massive role to play in all this. You think the big platforms give a shit about you? No, they don't. All they give a single flying fuck about is engagement with their platform. That is it. Because the higher the engagement, and the more you retain users, the more dollar bills come flying the big wigs way. Or lucky employees.
They don't give a fuck you've used their platform for 4 hours a day, or that you've been posting sad content, or that you keep viewing material that seems to be affecting your mental state. Not a single bit. It's all about how many ways they can get users back on their platform as soon as possible. More frequent notifications, smoother interface, more useless features that promote thinking about the app and more data collection (separate post about this coming soon). We don't need all this shit.
I could go on about this, but instead I'm going to recommend instead you head over to lookup.org.au. They've created a beautifully designed paper that touches on this and the idling stuff. Please read this, it's got some cool pics too (:
Tonight I'm going to watch the movie Soul. If you've seen it, watch it again. The messages in this film are so relevant at the moment, and I think we all need to be reminded of that. I'll talk about this in a future post, but it discusses deep philosophical problems at the core of many of us, twisted in some. The idea that we need a purpose to live, breathe, and experience. None of which is true. This is a very western idea, and is popularised and perpetuated by pop culture and social media. You don't need a specific reason to live, or goal obtained or anything of the likes. The purpose of life is that there is no purpose! And that may sound scary to some, but it's liberating. All you need to do is live. Each passing moment on this planet is special. Each chance encounter, experience with others. The summation of experience. It's all so beautiful (does anyone else sound this word out as they type it?), but we forget this sometimes.
Until next time, go well & stay safe,
Oskar
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